A purse...bag...tote?

Yay!  I've accomplished a project.  However, it wasn't a project on my to-do list.

Ok.  I don't know what this would be considered.  A purse, bag, tote, or is there even a difference between all those?  I've seen this style of bag before, most recently at retail stores, and last night when I decided I wanted to make one of these for the life of me I could not find a pattern or tutorial...because I don't know what it is called.  Is there a specific name to this design?  Most bags I've made or have looked for have a base name like Sling bag, market bag, messenger bag but with this bag I was nameless.

I love the thought of something being reversible, so of course that's what this little bag can do, be turned inside out.  For sturdiness/shape I used fusible fleece, even though I usually don't like to use interfacing when using vintage sheets since I love the soft flowy-ness of the fabric. 

I know I've seen tutorials for this design before, and I love referring to tutorials to get the guess work out making things, but did not find one.  So I decided to draw a pattern up myself.  The bags I usually make are relatively big, so I opted for a small bag, and started off with a 13x13 measurement.  Easy so far.  Then the decision of the handle.  How big should it be?  Drawing one out would be sooo unsymmetrical, so I opted to go MS Word and use their shapes. Hmmm.... however,  I still had the decision of how big the handle should be.  I knew for sure I wanted it to be an oval shape.  I first printed out an oval 1.5" x 4", and that looked too small. So I upped it just a bit and went with 1.75" x 4.5". 

But now with a finished product I think the handle is a little too wide, vertically.  I definitely love the oval shape of the handle, but it's a little tricky to sew around, and even with a ton of clipping around the handles that didn't prevent puckering/gathering/pinching around the handle.  I may opt to do a rounded rectangle shape in hopes that issue is eliminated.

I'm gonna still scour the web looking for tutorials on this. I'm in hopes to find a solution to the top of the bag.  When I made this one and got the sides sewn together and fitted into one another I was left with the unsewn top to tend to.  I'm use to the top being sewn when the bag is inside out, and all that is needed for the top is a top stitch, but in this case I wasn't sure how to handle that with the way the handles are constructed.  So I had to fold in the top edges, iron then sew.  Which, was probably the longest process in this whole bag.  Next time I'll fold down and iron the top prior to constructing the bag for a more straight edge.  Do you know what I mean or did I lose you?

I'm linking up with Faith Hope and Charity Shopping Ta-dah Tuesday.