My DSIL and I made this bag for her step-mother's birthday. Her birthday was two days ago and we just finished it last night. Hopefully she won't mind that we are a little late! My DSIL did the patchwork and I headed up the purse construction. We worked without a pattern, so the bag went through many revisions as we worked on it. At one time, it was going to be a quilted shawl. When we decided to do a bag instead, we added a machine embroidered section, but later ripped it out. We used polyester webbing inside the straps because I always load my bags too heavy and we wanted it to be strong.
By the way, my DSIL is a former lurker who recently introduced herself as Kendallsmom.