How to sew Book of Mormon scripture totes

I am posting this project because I tried to find directions online and couldn't find any. Now, if someone is interested in doing a similar project, I hope they will find this helpful.

I work with the children in my church's primary. Every year we have a theme and this year it is "I am a Child of God". We wanted the kids to understand that they can learn about the plan that God has for each of his children and about how much he loves them by reading the scriptures. The other women that I work with and I thought it would be great if each child had their own Book of Mormon that they brought to church each week and could have at home to read. We also thought it would be nice for each child to have a case or tote to carry their scriptures in.

I used dark denim material (works for both boys and girls) which was on sale at the time at Hancock Fabric.



Decided to give each child one of the very inexpensive ($2.50), soft cover Book of Mormons that measure 8" x 5". Cut a rectangle piece of denim at 16" x 9" (planned to double over the top seam, but not the side seams).



Folded in half and sewed up the top and bottom, leaving one of the 9" seams open:



Squared off the bottom two corners to create a sqaure bottom tote:



Folded the open edge under twice, ironed, and sewed:



Now it's time for the handles. Cut a piece of denim that was 3" by 9".



Ironed and sewed:







Measured so that each handle was evenly matched up on each tote. Sewed the handles on by sewing around in a square pattern.





Here's a shot of the squared-off bottom of the totes



The Book of Mormons fit perfectly into the totes. If you want to be able to carry a larger, triple combination, you would need to cut the fabric about an extra 2 inches on each side and square the bottom of the tote larger.



Here's a few of them finished. I forgot to get a photo of all 20 of them done!