First you need two pieces of fabric just wide enough for the bag to fit over with a little extra up top for your finished edge. Using recycled fabric, scrap material or whatever you have on hand will work.

I had a small piece of leftover fabric so I used it for a pocket for the inside of my lined purse. I folded down the upper edge twice so I had a nice finished edge to my pocket. I then pressed the sides and bottom edge over with a narrow hem and stitched it to the front of one of my lining panels.

Fold over, press and stitch upper edges on the two panel pieces that you cut for your lining. This gives you a nice finished top edge which you will use to attach to the inside edge of your completed plarn purse.

Then with right sides together, I used a marking pen to outline the finished purse shape. Don’t worry about the pen marks as you will be cutting them away once you stitch your lining panels together. Trace around the outside edge of your purse with the marker. With right sides together, baste stitch around the 3 sides of the lining just inside of the markings. Your finished lining looks like a pocket with the right sides of the fabric being on the inside. Insert the pocket inside your plarn purse shell. Check fit and then machine stitch around edges of your lining once your have the correct fit inside your purse shell. I zig zagged around the edges once I had the final fit and trimmed the edges close to stitching.
Click to supersize any of the photos

I hand stitch my lining along the top edge working from the inside of my purse. I use a hidden slip stitch along the top edge going through both layers of the fabric lining and the plarn purse shell. This secures the lining to the inside of the plarn purse without the stitches showing. See closeup completed photos below.

The recycled purse pattern shown in this project is found here. I did add one additional row to the original pattern to make the purse longer. You can always adapt my patterns by adding a row here or there to make the purses or bags bigger. Until next time — Enjoy![…]