Scripture tote - Fantastic Friday!

For our upcoming Fantastic Friday, I'm teaching the class on making a scripture-bag from a placemat (you could also just use it as a purse). Its hard to tell from the photo, but its smaller than a regular tote bag, but just slightly larger than a traditional scripture bag. Kendall saw something similar on a website and wanted it, but I scoffed at the over $30 price tag...the next day at the Fantastic Friday planning meeting, the Enrichment Leader showed up with an almost identical bag that she had made.

So, it wasn't my idea, but it worked out that I'm teaching the class, so I thought I'd better do a few for practice. Kendall picked out her own colors, etc (she wanted the same colors as our Enrichment Leader had). The materials cost me about $3

Here is one of the bags I made (light brown with striped ribbon), along with some bags that were made by other people as sample projects for Fantastic Friday:

PS - If you want to come to the class, there isn't any cost, but you need to bring your own placemat, ribbon, and flower (flower optional).

You'll need a fabric placemat. You don't need to spend a lot (I got mine at Big Lots for $1). After any major holiday you'll find usually colored placemats on sale (Red and pink after Valentines Day; Autumn colors after Halloween or Thanksgiving; Red, green, & metallics after Christmas). Or just keep checking the clearance sections of stores like WalMart or Target - they just about always have last season's styles on sale on the end of an aisle. A solid color or overall "toss" pattern will hide slightly skewed stitching better than stripes or plaid.

You'll also need a spool of ribbon that will go well with the color of the placemat. I think the grosgrain ribbon (the kind with the ribbing) is best because its better at hiding mistakes. It doesn't matter, just make sure its at least 1/2 inch wide and you probably don't want to go wider than 1 inch.

Finally, you'll need a fake flower - anything is fine. This is optional if you aren't the flower type.

This project took me 10 minutes (5 minutes for sewing, 5 minutes for hot gluing the ribbon) and I am NOT a skilled seamstress. This is a very easy project.
I'll be posting the directions for making the bag later (after Fantastic Friday!)