Butterfly Kisses Diaper Bag

Sorry for the nauseating title :) It's been a while since I've made a diaper bag. I think it's been since last year when I made a half-dozen it a fairly short time. A friend at work asked me to make one that he could fill and give to a friend for her pending bundle. I haven't worked with wee 'un prints for a while, and I didn't have anything else going on so I said yes.

I headed to Joann's to get the fabrics. I've seen them so many times I could sleepwalk to them. So of course they're rearranging the entire store and I felt like I was dropped down in the middle of a foreign county after being drugged. I was so very out of sorts and lost feeling. I commented to a staffer, and they told me it would be like that for a while. I'm not entirely unadaptable, but they had some things here, some things there, and no organization whatsoever. I felt like I was digging through clothing racks in a thrift store to find what I needed--I had to look at each and every bolt, as each and every fabric genre was jumbled together. The fun part was that I had no idea if they even carried what I was looking for anymore, so I did an internal happy dance when I found the goods.

Three nights of cutting, fusing, stitching and pinning and I've got this to deliver:

It came out a little taller than I anticipated, but I had jotted down two measurements in my notes and went with the larger one. I must now cross that one out.

 I could look at that piping all day, and I'm not a using a literary device to exaggerate my love. I really think I could. I used it in an almost-exactly-the-same bag last year.

 I pulled up the lining a little bit to do some faux piping for the top edge (I was having a bulk situation) so this was a cute remedy.

 Pockets a'plenty. Each side has three, so there are nine pockets in this bag. I think I'd be so organized I wouldn't know where anything was.

This bag uses a lot of fabric (three yards!), with not much left over. This is how I've made them since I started, but I'm thinking of a slight redesign with the handles. Those handles take a LOT of fabric as they have to be long to run up and down the bag exterior. I don't know that the pocket they're on the side of gets used much so my internal debate is should I nix the straps and the front pocket and have the handles come out of the top of the bag? It would cut some bulk in the bottom seam and save a lot of time and fabric. But I don't know if it would lose some appeal. What do you think?