About a year ago I discovered the BurdaStyle site – where they have open source patterns. And then over the summer I saw an event organised in NYC where they were making these Charlie Bags – foldable fabric bags for putting shopping in. The pattern is free, and came as a PDF. You print the PDF, and then you cut and stick to make the paper pattern – the bag is bigger than A4.

Once I’d made the pattern, I cut out the bag and followed the instructions. They have good instructions, step by step with pictures. The Charlie bag is really simple so you just zig-zag round the shape and leave the handles like that, just unfinished, which is about the only way someone with my sewing abilities is going to make anything with curvy handles :)

I’m really pleased with the result:

This was pretty simple and now I’ve assembled the paper pattern, I might make a few more :)