Ombre Tote

Warm weather is arriving, and it’s the perfect time to grab a tote, fill it with all the things you need on the go for a sunny day, and set off on an adventure. A plain old tote won’t cut it though, we need something worthy of the beach! Instead of making everything from scratch, this project is whipped up easily using a ready-made bag. After using a couple quick tricks and collaging on some embroidery designs, you won’t recognize it from the plain old tote you started with.

It also helps a lot to have printed templates of all the designs you’re going to use. Here's how to print templates for placement. Designs like these are meant to be layered, but it helps to know how they will all lay out beforehand. Templates will be your best tool!

For this bag, I’m using the 5"x7" seahorse, fish and Set Sail designs, and the 4"x4" versions of the compass rose and anchor accents (all of which are included in the 5"x7" pack).

Let’s start by making our bag a little more ocean-inspired. Lightly spray the bottom of your bag with a couple of light coatings of blue fabric spray, fading upwards.

Let your tote dry before you move on to the next step. It should be noted that once my paint dried, I also went over this bag with a nice hot iron. It’s pretty darn wrinkly.

So, in order to make embroidering on our tote as easy as possible, we’re going to open up the side seams to make hooping it a cinch.

You’ll find especially on these craft tote bags, opening up the seams is super easy. In fact, this baby will probably be much sturdier when you sew it back together.

You only need to rip down to where the box corners of your seam start at the bottom of your bag. That will give you enough flexibility with hooping.

Once your seams are open, you can start laying out where you want your designs to go. You can see here how the templates help. This will also help you work out the order you want to stitch things in.

I put my accents to the back, so they’ll stitch first. Then the big colorful animals will stitch, with the “Set Sail” design finishing it off on top.