The Perfect Dance Slash Tote Bag

One night, a few weeks ago, on my birthday to be exact, Rich and I arrived home from work and found two pairs of the girls' boots along with Emily's dance bag on the garage stoop with a note telling us not to move them because. . . there was throw up on them.  Now, ever since last year's Norovirus Incident, I panic whenever there's mention of vomit.  "A boy named Joe threw up at school."  "Yeah, I saw him at the nurse's office." "My friend Alexa was out sick again."  Those statements freak me out.  Thankfully, Emily threw up because of a Peanut Butter Incident.  Yeah, I would say that I have the weirdest kids ever, because who throws up from the taste of peanut butter, but my youngest brother is the same exact way.  It can't be genetic though because only Allie and Emily do this.  Anna loves peanut butter.  So, anyway, Emily puked on her dance bag and her boots and Allie's boots.  Allie's boots had just about seen their last day anyway so those things went straight into the trash can.  I would have simple thrown Emily's dance bag into the wash but it was covered in stickers



and I knew that it would not have a happy ending so I told Emily I would just stitch up a new dance bag for her.  And then I started freaking out about work and tax returns and laundry and dirty bathrooms.

But I did finish her dance bag.



So, if you don't have young kids in dance, here's the deal with dance bags: dance shoes shouldn't be worn outside so they need to be carried in something.  Pretty simple.



The girls are in a tap/jazz combo class right now so they each have two pairs of dance shoes.  When they arrive at the studio, they change into their tap shoes.  Their bags are brought into the studio and in the middle of class, they change into their jazz shoes.

Because I wanted to test out my embroidery machine, I decided put Emily's name on the bag.  During my first attempt, the embroidery thread broke on the "l" and then again on the "y."  I did some research, consulted with a bunch of embroidery experts, made some adjustments, tried again and it worked.

This bag is really just a basic tote bag.  There's an outside pocket but I wanted someplace to tack down shoelaces and ties for her tap shoes so I added these ribbon tabs on the inside.







Emily loves it.  For the most part, I like it.  I've been trying out different sewing techniques with bags so this gave me a chance to experiment a little.