The Umbrella Bag Ta-Dah

Introducing the Umbrella  Bag! No, not a bag to keep your umbrella in but a bag made from an umbrella.

Normally I would use a broken umbrella but as this is a gift, I bought a couple of new ones, albeit from poundland.
It's my friend's birthday today and her favourite colour is turquoise, so when I saw this turquoise umbrella I knew exactly what to give her. It has a lot of red in the owl print on it,so I got a plain red one too for contrast.
It's not the nicest quality umbrella fabric but what can you expect for the money?

First, remove the fabric carefully from the frame. I know I bought (really ) cheap ones but it was held together with tiny plastic tags - the sort used to attach price tags to clothes. It's no wonder it only takes one puff of wind to turn inside out!
Lay the fabric out and iron out the creases. I had the iron set to medium and the fabric didn't melt.

Decide on the size and shape of bag you want to make, and whether you want to make a feature of the centre of the fabric. The fabric is made up of triangular panels that meet in the centre and there is a small hole at the centre.
I did make a feature of this, as you'll see in the finished bag. I glued a contrast button over the centre hole. Check the seam on all the panels and make sure they're not going to come undone. Strengthen them with a line of machine stitching if you feel you need to.

Now make your bag...Apologies that I'm not writing you a nice little tutorial but I wanted to just get on with it and not keep taking photos. If you Really want one, just leave a comment and I might write one up over the coming weeks. And yes, I know the handles are close together. The fabric is so floppy that I know from experience to stitch the handles a woman's "hand width" apart.

Ta-Dah!!

Not bad eh? There was enough fabric left to make a matching bag for it too. And see all those creases in the bag? They're deliberately ironed in to make it easier to fold it up neatly so it fits in it's little bag.

Umbrella fabric is ultra thin and light, holds a fold so it's easy to fold up and put away and is (usually ) really strong. Perfect for a medium sized shopping bag when you only need to buy a few bits. Although you could always use two umbrella and patch the fabric to make a larger bag.

I made a slightly smaller version from a striped umbrella a few years ago and often get comments on it. And as it's so thin and folds up so small, it easily fits in the pocket of my handbag, so I'm never without a bag!