Northrup King Vintage Bag - Happy 50th Birthday!

What a fantastic surprise when this beauty came in the mail on Friday. I thought it would be the size bag I usually get, but WHOA this thing is HUGE!! with good graphics on the front and the back.
Another added bonus was it still had the original tag attached to it. Once I threw on my reading glass (sigh) I was able to see on the tag that this bag was prepped and shipped  in January of 1965. 50 YEARS AGO. How crazy is that? Happy Birthday you pretty bag. Now lets cut you up!!
I hated to remove that tag, but it was very cardboard-y and there was no way to incorporate it into a handbag. I did keep it though :) I will say, the staples that were holding it on were pretty old and gnarly, and I was glad that I am up to date on my tetanus shots....

I knew that I would be able to get two handbags out of this, but it really takes some planning. You make one wrong cut trying to cut out a piece and you've ruined your chances to make two of them because you've cut through fabric you needed for the other. I knew I wanted to see "New York" on a flap. City names are always popular. I also wanted to use the Northrup King logo from the front of the bag. Because both of these were in a hard to get to kinda place it was screwing me up on my other pattern pieces. I finally resigned myself to the fact that although I wanted to make two pleated bags, one would not be able to be. However, the end result still came out great! And luckily I had some cargo pants on hand to do the linings with lots of pockets!