The Podium bag is a new pattern that is offered from the Bag of the Month Club.  The BOTMC costs $40 and runs from January 2018 – June 2018.  Each month you are given a new pattern to make from a different designer.  Each pattern will be brand new and won’t be offered to the public until July 2018 when the club membership ends.  The Podium Bag is a pattern offered for January by Christine Welsh from “ChrisW Designs“.

The BOTMC also offers a competition with winners at the end of each month with additional winners at the end of the 6 months.  There are judged prizes and random prizes.  There is also a Facebook group online with tons of nice people to address any questions or problems you have with the pattern.

Here are the Designers listed for the first half of the year:

JANUARY – Christine Welsh – Chris W Designs – The Podium Bag

FEBRUARY – Betz White – Betz White – NOT AVAILABLE YET

MARCH – Celine Allaert – Blue Calla Patterns – NOT AVAILABLE YET

APRIL – Alicia Miller – Swoon Sewing Patterns – NOT AVAILABLE YET

MAY – Janelle Mackay – Emmaline Bags Sewing Patterns – NOT AVAILABLE YET

JUNE – Samantha Hussey – Sewing Patterns by Mrs. H – NOT AVAILABLE YET

If you check out most of these sites, they offer free patterns.

 

Now for “My Podium”

I picked up the hardware I needed for this bag at Emmaline Bags online.  Janelle Mackay from Emmaline Bags offers pre-packaged hardware kits for each month.

My fabric choices.

My fabric and interfacing cut out to the sizes I needed.

Everything all cut out and ready to go.  I always attach the pattern pieces to the cut out pieces to make sure  I am sewing the right pieces together.  Believe me it is a time saver not having to dig through a bunch of cut fabric for the ONE piece you need.

This pattern called for some thick sew on interfacing.  By the end of my project I was afraid that all the thick layers wouldn’t fit under my sewing foot.  It was touch and go there a few times. (Which is leading me on a search for an industrial sewing machine for such projects.)

Working on my strap and making sure it will be long enough for the bag.  I am making this for my daughter so I wanted to make sure it would fit her nicely.

I had to attach part of the magnetic snap on the front exterior of the bag.  These photos also show me adding the bottom part of the bag’s exterior trim.  Since I just used fabric, I left the bottom trim alone.  I have seen others make the bag using cork and leather and they punched out a design of holes in the bottom trim.

The flap was really fun to work on.  I was really excited to add on the “handcrafted” metal label.  It gave my bag a nice professional look.  I received a nice pair of cutting sheers for Christmas that I was able to try out on the curves of my flap.  They worked awesome.  So much quicker than the little cuts I was putting in myself on all of the corners.

Adding my exterior base to my bag.

Adding my interior pocket zipper.

Here is an additional split pocket in the interior of the bag right in front of the zippered pocket.

Finishing up the inside lining of the purse and the bottom base.  The bottom picture shows the split pocket inside and the zippered pocket.

Side reinforcements to help keep the inside of the bag open wide at all times.  This will make it easy put in/take out things in your purse.  For this I used rivets, Pellon 77 and a plastic template piece.

One of the nice features of this bag is a hidden phone pocket in the back.  I just love it.  My daughter has a really big phone and it fits in this pocket perfectly.

Attaching the exterior and interior pieces together.   Again, this was a really thick project to work on by the time I had all the pieces together.  I then had to turn the bag inside out by going through the inside zippered pocket.  Let me say, this was very hard to do because of the thickness of all the layers.  The bottom right photo shows you a nice view inside of the bag.

Here I had to sew in a box at the top to give this bag a nice little ledge.

Sewing up the inside zipper pocket now that my bag is turned inside out.

Adding the straps.

Making the tassel for the front of the purse.  This is just decorative since the flap actually closes with the magnetic snap.  I really like the overall look the tassel adds to the bag.  I will definitely be adding these to future projects.

Finished bag photos.

Finished bag = One Happy Daughter! (Who wasn’t happy I took a photo of her in pajamas because I finished it so late at night and couldn’t wait to show her.)