Finally got a camera so now I can show you the bag I made
I found this gorgeous (and thankfully cheap) fabric and the book: 'yeah I made it myself!' had a tutorial for hwo to make a tote bag. So here it is! simple but nice. All hand sewn, and I've even had my bajillion library books in it without breaking.
Give it a try yourself! My tutorial is below...

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~~Tote Bag Tutorial~~

First and foremost, I learnt how to make this off ‘Yeah! I made it myself’ By Eithne Farry. Awesome book - well worth a buy for beginners
What you’re getting here is essentially a copy of her tutorial, with my own observations and tips/changes shoehorned in too.
You can find the bag tutorial on p69 of her book

Materials:

*About 1 metre + of material. For me, I made sure that it was big enough lengthwise and widthwise to incorperate an A4 folder (so you’re going to have a rectangular bag here. So that’s big enough for 2 A4 folders, one on each side, since you’re folding this fabric in half).

*About 2 metres of wide ribbon.For your handles. The length is upto you, but genrally you need that much. You’ll cut it in half for the handles.

*Some thread which matches your fabric. I double it so it’s stronger.

Other bits & bobs:
*More material if you want to line the bag (I didn’t)
*Iron on interfacing for the top edge fo the bag if you like (I didn’t)
*buttons/zip/poppers if you want the bag sealed (I didn’t)
*Needle, scissors, pins (to hold fabric in place)
*Iron (it’s surprising how much ironing the material helps keep things in order)
*A pre-bought bag you might already have to use as a sort of template/guide (I used one just to compare sizes).
All kinds of crap to pin/tie on/decorate your bag with once it’s finished (whee! X3)
Note: I made my bag by hand sewing it. If you have a sewing machine it’s probably far easier and faster (lol). If you have a sewing machine, it might be a good idea to ‘zig-zag’ the edges for strength. Since I didn’t want to be 83 before I finished my bag, I didn’t bother, and made sure to just sew the thing twice to keep it strong. So far my bag hasn’t exploded, so it seems to work.
It’s Bag-making time…
1) Cut out your fabric. I was lucky that i had a solid straight edge to my fabric, so i decided to keep that and use the tougher bit of material for my bag top. I used my old bag and a A4 folder as rough guides for how big the thing needed to be. When I cut it out I ended up making the bag too long but, as you will see, that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
2)Fold your fabric in half (inside out, of course). Check it for size. Then unfold it to do your hems…
3) Sew a hem on the top and bottom edges of your bag. (Note: a hem is just where you turn over the material to create an edge and pin-then-sew it in place) My top hem was about a inch wide and my bottom one was bigger. For all my bag I used a backstitch because it’s quite strong and won’t gather your material like a running stitch does. I didn’t care much about it showing through the material, since my choice of thread colour blended in quite well. Plus, stitches make it look interesting. I sarted off taking great pains to make the stitch line straight, but I eventually said ‘to hell with it’ and just allowed it to be wonky. It still looks ok, in my opinion :3
NOTE:
4)Fold your fabric in half and stitch up the side seams. Again, your bag is inside out when you do this. Just put your side edges together and pin-then-sew them up, don’t worry about folding material or anything.
5) At this point I returned to my hems and did another line of stitches on them to strengthen them. I didn’t do this to the top one, because that hem is only for neatness sake. But i did another line of stitches for the bottom hem and the side seam, since both these need to be very strong. I tried to keep my backstitches small for strength. You don’t want your bag exploding and spraying schoolbooks everywhere, do you?
6) (With your bag still inside out) Fold over the bottom part of the bag until it’s at a length you like and sew. Needless to say, sew it twice for strength. As i said, my bag’s bottom was majorly too long. I did like you did with a seam or hem and sewed it where I wanted the bag to end (the bag bottom to be). However these stitched were a good few 3 or 4 Inches up the bag (cos it was too long to begin with). I was left with a flappy material. What i did was, seperate these bits of material (so you have 2 ‘wings’ of material. arrange it so 1 is at each side of the seam, like open butterfly wings). I then simply sewed them to the inside of the bag (making sure not to sew through both layers of the bag). It only required a stitch or two just to tack them in place on what will be the inside of your bag. So wing 1 is sewn into one side of the bag and wing 2 is sewn onto the other side of the bag. These actually helped me, because they created a solid base that makes the bag stronger - huzzah!
7) Decide on the length of your handles and cut the ribbon in half so you have 2 handles. Sew them on. Note that when your bag if turned inside out, it’s wider than when it’s turned the right way out (due to the seams)- so decide where you want your handle edges to be sewn by looking at the outside of the bag, befor eyou turn it inside out again to be able to sew it. Ribbon 1 will create handle 1 which is attached to one side of your bag (not across both parts) and ribbon 2 will create handle 2 which is sewn on the other side. You know what bag handles look like: an upside down ‘U’. When you sew them, sew them to the inside of your bag. You sew them in place using a back stitch. Sew a square shape a little back from the edge of your ribbon - this should be slightly less than your ribbon’s width and long enough for it to be strong (maybe upto the seam part of your bag’s top edge). Sew your square shape, then sew an X shape in the centre of it (so it touches the diagonals). This is your renforced handle. Sew it again to give it strength. Now do the same for the rest of your handles.
Turn your bag inside out, admire, and voila! You have a bag!
If you’re not all that confident with your stitches (as I initialy wasn’t), when you take your bag out for a ‘test drive’ pack a plastic bag…incase your bag explodes and you need something to keep your stuf in XD
However my bag hasn’t exploded yet- it’s quite sturdy- so yours should be too :3
So there you go: you’ve just made yourlsef a cool bag ^_^