Closet Core free tote pattern

made from thrifted curtain fabric and remnant leather

A friend of the family recently gifted me several large curtains made from beautiful wool tartan fabric. When I say ‘several’ I mean at least 4 pairs of HUGE curtains, all-in-all most likely double-digits-worth of metres of fabric. The fabric, whilst really high quality Scottish wool (made in Lochcarron, a historic producer of tartan fabric), is really not my personal style, so my mother-in-law seized upon it with glee. She has an Etsy shop (Florence Forever Finds) where she sells a variety of interesting historic homewares, and specialises in Scottish pieces. Her plan is to salvage as much of the fabric as possible (some parts are faded from sunlight) and sell it in her shop.

In the meantime, my husband’s American cousin Becca came over for her annual summer visit. She is originally from Inverness and fell in love with the fabric when she saw the curtains in storage, waiting to be processed. She made an off-hand comment about how she would love something made from the material and I squirreled the thought away for the future. I didn’t have a specific plan to make her anything any time soon, if I’m honest, my sewing to-do list is permanently overflowing.

I’ve been experimenting with vintage silk remnants (a topic for another day) and have created a piece of new fabric from these leftovers. My plan was to turn them into the Closet Core tote bag, a free download you receive when subscribing to their newsletter. I printed the pattern, stuck it together and cut out the size I wanted, but at the point I would be cutting into my precious, one of a kind, unique fabric, I hesitated. Having never made this pattern before, I decided to make a trial version first. My eye alighted on the pile of wool tartan curtain material and a lightbulb went off. I decided to make my trial for Becca, with the plaid fabric.

Amongst the kind donation of curtains, were a few other pieces of material, including a large amount of green leather off cuts. I love working with leather, in the future I’m hoping to upgrade my sewing machine to a heavy duty industrial version capable of sewing leather with more ease. I only broke one needle sewing this bag, but my machine still struggled with the thickness and weight of fabric in places. Still, I’m really pleased with the outcome. The green compliments the tartan well (I’m sure they must have been bought specifically to decorate a home on a colour theme), and provides practical structure and robustness to the tote.

I used the leather for the base, handles, and outer pockets (there’s one on each side), using jeans buttons in place of rivets for the base and the handles. Rivets weren’t long enough to penetrate the layers of fabric. When I took the curtains to pieces to salvage the material, I realised they had a high quality wool batting and a plain white cotton back. I cut the main body of the tote including all three of these layers, I figured the weight would add structure to the bag. I overlocked the layers together and then treated them as a single piece of fabric. This definitely added thickness to the seams, which caused some machine issues. I ended up hand sewing the final part, the folded top of the bag, to make it look cleaner and more professional than my wonky sewing from the struggling machine.

The photos were taken in a rush, immediately before gifting the bag, so apologies for the inappropriate blurring in places. The risks of using portrait mode on a sunny day, when you can’t see your phone properly. Becca seemed really pleased with the bag, which was lovely, and I got a wearable trial under my belt, ready for my precious kimono fabric. Watch this space for the final version!