Guest Poster: Mara from Secretly Stitching

Hello my name is Mara, I blog over at Secretly Stitching, let me show you my version of the Fireside Bowl Bag, the first pattern in the "Big City Bags" book, by Sara Lawson.

The white fabric with chocolate covered strawberries is "Chocoholic" designed for Exclusively Quilters and the black strawberry fabric is Studio 8 for Quilting Treasures.
The strap is Black Kona and the detail is Red Kona.

For the Interior I used the same black fabric as the exterior bottom.

I only did 1 pocket and since I only had 1 lobster claw I only used 1 on 1 side and sewed the strap in on the other.

Detail of sewed in strap side.

The making of this bag went super easy, I didn't have any deco-fuse fusible interfacing so my version is a little softer, and the fabrics made me crave a stop at my favorite coffee shop, so I took the bag along.

I drank my latte and the bag and I picked out some sweets, chocolate covered, of course.

There really is no front or back of this bag, they both look the same.

Oh and I added handles at the top, just for fun :)

Things I would change if I make this bag again:
Definitely use the required Deco-Fuse, it's very soft with out it,
and make the exterior bottom fabric larger, it doesn't really show up much. 
I like the hand straps and would do them again, it makes it easy to remove the strap and carry, I can tuck mine inside and I added a pocket for the strap, so it wouldn't go to the bottom of the bag and possible get dirty.

 
I hope you are joining Angela here at Sewing with Squeak for the "Big City Bags" Sew Along.