First project: a lined tote bag
About 36 x 38 x 10 cm (14 x 15 x 4 inches), 2 to 3 hours.
Step by step
- Prewash fabrics; cut panels, straps and interfacing; fuse.
- Cut corner squares and make straps.
- Sew outer bag and box corners.
- Sew lining the same way, leaving a 15 cm (6 inch) gap in the bottom.
- Baste straps to the outer top, nest the outer bag inside the lining (right sides together) and sew round the top.
- Turn through the gap and close it by edgestitching or ladder stitch.
- Topstitch 6 mm (1/4 inch) from the top edge with a 3 mm stitch, and add a box-X where the straps meet the bag.
Watch
How to Make a Simple Reversible Lined Tote Bag (5:42)
By Notches Sewing · Open on YouTube
Chosen from its title and channel: a 5-minute video from Notches Sewing on the same topic as this guide. Embedded from YouTube with credit; we don't host it. It only loads when you press play.
All guides ›Bag making
Sources
All checked 1 November 2026. We read these; we did not test the products ourselves.