Originally Posted by piepatch
deema, first of all, I love your bag, and I love your choice of fabric. I have a pattern that looks a lot like your bag, and I am wondering if yours is the same one. Mine is an Amy Butler pattern called the "Frenchy Bag", and I really like it, but I found the top band around the top was a little hard to sew in. The problem could have been the particular fabric I was working with, but I am wondering if you found it difficult to get that top band to fit right on your bag.
I didn't use a pattern, I just kind of recreated a bag I saw made that I liked. What I did with the top band is use four separate pieces, one strip sewed to the top of each piece of the lining, and one sewed to the top of each piece of the outer fabric. I pressed the raw edge in at roughly 1/4", and sewed the two liner pieces together and two outer pieces together, leaving the tops open (essentially creating two bags), flip the outside right side out, leave the lining right sides together. Then I sewed the strap to the outside of the lining, stuffed the lining into the outer fabric and did a top stitch across the top of the top band. This way the strap is contained between the two pieces where the bag you did, the strap is outside (from what I can see).
You can see that there is a small pleat on the back of my bag, which was part of the design in my "inspiration bag", but was kind of unintentional in that one (I didn't want the pleat), but became a part of it because the strips for the outer fabric were a wee bit longer than the strips for the lining...it became a part of the design that I will never tell anyone else about. I'm in the process of making another one, and will be paying closer attention to my measuring...LOL