I rarely make gifts these days, I'm a very selfish seamstress, and lately with teaching most weekends at Ministry of Craft, plus working on various other freelance projects and putting together a collection for college, there is not much time to sew for myself at all.
Despite that though, I made an exception for India's boyfriend, John. He is a stylish young man with very clear ideas about the kind of clothes he likes, (I realise my description of him makes me sound about 110 years old! ) as you can see from his blog.
He showed me a tote bag he liked and lost for ideas of what to buy him for his birthday a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would make him a bag very similar to the one he showed me.


I used denim recycled from some of Woody's old jeans, making use of some of the seams already in place, added an internal pocket with visible top stitching to the outside, a little denim inseam label and a kilt strap to fasten it.
I *think* I got the aesthetic right, of course John is far too polite to tell me if I haven't, but India assures me he likes it and is using it for University.
I don't usually enjoy this kind of sewing, but actually I really did! Very refreshing to work on something I wouldn't usually.