How to Make a Book Tote Bag for Kids

How to Make a Book Tote Bag for Kids! These make great gifts for kids so they can carry their own books on library trips. This is such an easy to sew pattern.

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We love library trips. Or rather, my kids do and I love the idea of them. Do you remember the old Toys-R-Us contest where if you won, you’d get a shopping spree where you had to grab everything off the shelves as fast as possible? That’s my kids at the library. I’m running behind them like “Can you PLEASE PLEASE look at the cover before you shove it into this now 20 lb bag of book?! PLEASE!?”

Usually I let them have about 2 minutes in fiction, then we move to non fiction for another 2 minutes. Annnnnnd we’re done. Am I alone here? I used to love the library, but now I get a bit panicky. Haha.

I figured it was time to slow them down. Hence. Today’s project. Learn how to make a book tote for great gifts- but I’m making these for my kids. Because I have this crazy idea that giving them their own bag to fill will limit them. I imagine I’ll end up carrying both bags and an armful of books, but we’ll see. They’re excited about their bags and this is a fairly basic sewing project.

Supplies for a Book Tote Bag

Exterior and interior fabrics
Interfacing or fusible fleece (what I used- it was a bit unnecessarily thick, but it worked)
Fabric for straps

How to Make a Book Tote Bag

Check out this video tutorial or skip below for the photo tutorial.

Cuts for your fabric:

Straps are 28″ long. You can pick the width you’d like them to be.
For the main bag, I cut my inner, outer, and fleece lining to be 15″ tall x 25″ wide. Then I just folded the fabric over.

Fold your exterior fabric and fleece lining in half, right sides together. Sew along the long edge and the bottom.

Do the same for the interior fabric piece.

Now you need to turn your interior right sides out and stuff in into your exterior fabric (so exterior fabric and interior fabrics are right sides together).

Sew around, leaving a small spot to turn it all right sides out. Turn right sides out, then stuff the interior back into the bag (the correct way this time). It should look like the finished book tote now.

You can now press the edges if you want, then top stitch around the top.

Now you need to add your straps. I sewed the straps on with an X with a box around it.

Here’s the Doctor Who Book Tote Bag:

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Danielle Pientka

Danielle Pientka is the sewing and DIY blogger behind DIYDanielle.com. She taught herself to sew in 2011 when she wanted to make cloth diapers for her first son. She’s been sewing everything from ecofriendly items to kids products to clothing since, as it has become a passion. She loves learning how to do new things and teaching others in the process. She hopes to inspire other moms to take time for themselves to find their own creative passion.

Danielle lives in Maryland with her three young sons and her husband, Brandon. In her spare time, she gardens, reads, horseback rides, and has a small homestead with goats and ducks. Visit her shop to buy patterns or her sewing eBooks. Subscribe to her newsletter to get blog updates, free patterns and other printables by clicking here.