Basic Bag Shapes

A few days ago I came up upon a blog written by L I ER here who has sewn a lot of handbags. She has categorized handbags into a number of types. I like this idea. I concur with her categorization, for the most part.    You can find her series on bag making starting here.   She focuses on making bags from a garment sewer's perspective, i.e. using heavier fabrics and lining everything beautifully.  (I tend to make bags from a quilter's perspective, using quilter's cottons, more seam bindings and fewer separate linings.)

The gist of it is to ignore all the little details such as size, straps, and to look at the basic bag structure.

 I have modified her categorizations a bit in my list, but it is not an exact science, obviously,

this is a list of bag categories.

1.  the flat bag
     the simplest type, just a front and a back.  It has no depth 

       Lots of variations

2.  the boxed bottom bag
     a flat bag is sewn extra wide, and then the base is created by "boxing" the bottom -- sewing a seam perpendicular to the side seam

3. The bucket bag
    a cylinder sewn to a base.

4. the wrapped Bag.
    the front, base and back of the bag are one piece.  Two sides are sewn on to the main piece.

5. the gussetted bag,
    the front and bag are separate pieces, the sides and bottom are a gusset that wraps around the 3 sides of the front and back.

6.  flat bag with darts.
    this starts out like a flat bag, often with a rounded form which has  triangular darts sewn to create depth in the bag.

7.  Double boxed cylinder bag.
     this is a rectangle that is sewn into a cylinder, then manipulated so that it becomes like a shoe-box shape.  think of a make-up bag, or a pencil case,

8. bags of unusual construction
    sometimes you will come across a bag made out of various units, such as a gored bag, Another example could be shapes like  orange segments, or perhaps a lot of hexagons sewn together to make a 3-D form...

Of course coming upon such a list makes me immediately determined that I have to sew one of each style in order to fully understand the structure types.  

(Let's not even get started on all the types of straps that Lier goes through on her blog, here)