Zakka Bag for Mom's Day

While puttering around on the web a couple of weeks ago I came across these lovely basket/bags on this blog (there are some great pictures of these zakka style bags there). I thought they were super cute and such a good idea (since the bottoms of bags are always the tricky part for me) and would make a fun Mother's Day present. Then I won a free yard of fabric from Sew, Mama, Sew! (they are so awesome over there, if you sew anything you need to be reading their blog) and took it as a sign that I should definitely make one. For my free fabric I picked one of the new Amy Butler Midwest Modern fabrics and I even had a coordinating fabric already in my stash. My original idea was for it to be a bag for mom's knitting projects, but as I made it I realized it was going to end up much bigger than I had intended and that it would also make a great beach bag. I mostly used this tutorial (and I really love her bags with knitted bottoms, definitely on my list of knitting projects to make), with a few modifications to fit my lazier style of sewing and I'm really quite happy with how it turned out, I think mom was too! There will be more of these in my future, especially since I got quite a few half price baskets at Michael's...



I had no idea why these were called Zakka bags, so I did a little web snooping and was able to find the best description here as "zakka has come to represent a style of art and craft that is simple, charming, and of Japanese esthetic". Well, I think simple and charming definitely applies, Happy Mother's Day Mom!

The future zakka bag owner herself, it cracks me up how much my youngest child looks like her: