Bag of the Week 42

Wash and Wear

Today’s post is actually last week’s bag.  I wrote about this project here, about the frustrations I was having.  Sigh.  I was so enjoying making this bag until I hit a snag.  It is now finished but so are some of the grand plans I had for this bag, too.

I fell in love with this little travel lingerie bag the first time I saw it in Stitch magazine (Spring 2010).  It is designed as a flat pouch with zippers at either end, divided in the middle to form two separate areas, one for clean items and one for dirty.  I used the template provided on the Stitch website and followed the author’s instructions for appliquéing the garments onto the light aqua linen I picked for the body of the bag.  The fabrics and laces are fused onto the bag before they are stitched down.  The instructions call for hand stitching with a running stitch but I used a small zigzag (1.5 mm x 1.5 mm) and monofilament thread.  The clothesline is pearl cotton couched on with more of the monofilament.  I chose to machine embroider the words instead of hand stitching them.  I found a great floss-stitched font at Jolson’s Designs (for a mere $3 – quite a bargain).  I even stitched a little monogram on the purple shirt.

I really enjoyed the project to this point.  When it came time to put the bag together I ran into trouble.  There is nothing wrong with the written instructions; I just couldn’t make my chosen supplies come together.  First, the linen I was using is fairly bulky.  I tried an old trick of using a longer zipper than necessary, planning to cut off the extra.  The bulk of the zipper coil added to the linen made it impossible to get a cleanly turned corner.  I also realized I was going to have trouble hand sewing in the lining and making it fit correctly with the awkwardly turned corner.  I unstitched the entire thing and started over.

After much trial and error what finally worked for me was to sew the lining pieces together into a tube and the outer fabric into another.  I placed the lining inside the outer sleeve, serged the raw edges together and treated it as one.  I sewed in about 1.5” on each end of the top opening and set a smaller zipper into the remaining opening.  The zipper is stretched out flat and is merely topstitched into place.  The zipper tape hides the serged fabric edges.

I thought perhaps I could sell bags like this in my (coming soon) Etsy store.  I imagined they might make great gifts for bridal attendants.  But I will have to come up with a much more streamlined design for the bag if that is going to work, as the amount of time I spent just constructing this bag makes it impractical as a commercial item.  This was a good lesson that dreams need to be tested out in reality to make sure they will work.

I'm sharing this post today with the folks over at Today's Creative Blog on their Get Your Craft On feature.  Check them out.

Try, Try Again

Well, I had good intentions for my Bag of the Week post but it’s not going to happen.  The creative part is all finished and it is super cute.  In fact, I told a friend two days ago, that this has been my FAVORITE project in a long time.  I loved how it was turning out.  That all came to a screeching halt today when it came time to construct the bag.  Don’t you hate when that happens?  A project is going along wonderfully and then, somewhere between steps 12 and 13, it goes from being a favorite to being a wadder.  This bag’s fate isn’t quite that dire but it will take some unstitching, redesigning and reworking to make this a success.  And it has to be, because the details on it are just too cute to trash.

So, instead of posting a Bag of the Week today I will defer and post two next week.

My hope is always to provide inspiration to my readers but today’s post should also remind you that, as a sewing blogger, I show you only the projects I want you to see.  All of us have projects that are just not worthy of show and tell.

Bag of the Week 40

Gettin’ Hitched

Did you know that this weekend in October is the most popular wedding weekend of the year?  More people get married on the Columbus Day weekend than any other in the year, or so I am told by my wedding industry friends.  The weather is often ideal and the three-day weekend makes a Sunday wedding more feasible since guests can return home the following day.  This year will be no exception, and perhaps will be even more popular, as Sunday’s date of 10-10-10 is sure to be memorable enough for even the most forgetful groom (or bride) to remember.

A number of years ago I was asked to create a purse for a bride-to-be.  Her friends wanted her to have something memorable as a gift and I think they got their wish.  The bride was a big fan of dachshunds, owning several as pets, and her friends wanted her to have a bridal purse that honored that passion.  I began by looking for a pattern for a stuffed dachshund but there were none in the current pattern catalogs.  This was in the very early days of Ebay so I ventured on there and found a vintage pattern for several stuffed animals including the dog I was looking for.  (This elated me at the time.  I had no idea how easy it was to become to find obscure items with the touch of a key).

I sewed the pattern according to the instructions, using bridal satin for the body and inserted an invisible zipper in the seam that ran along the dog’s backbone.  I attached a pocket-like lining along this zipper so the purse contents could be contained inside the dog’s body.  I used light pink silk for the inner ears.  The nose and eyes were purchased from a craft store along with the fake eyelashes.  I created a pouffy veil from tulle and fastened it to the top of the head with a vintage pin as well as a "pearl" necklace with rhinestone dogtag.  The purse's strap mimicked a dog’s chain leash. 

This project was different for me; I had never created anything so whimsical before but I found that I was inspired to create something unique for this bride.  The project taught me how to think outside of the box and come up with a solution to a puzzle.  I understand the bride thought it was perfect.

Enjoy your holiday weekend.

Bag of the Week 39

Rooster Toile

For this week’s offering I am pulling out an old picture of a tote bag I made and donated to a silent auction.  The bag is a simple rectangular tote that I made fully reversible.  One side features a black and white toile farm scene complete with a rooster.  The reverse side features a red and white rooster print.  I used a matching red buffalo plaid as the top edge, bottom and straps.

Bag of the Week 38

Fall Leaves

Fall arrived at 8:09 p.m. on Wednesday but here in Washington, DC it felt more like the height of summer with temperatures this week in the 90’s.  Hopefully those of you reading this post in cooler parts of the world will fully appreciate these little wool bags with appliquéd fall leaves.  For those of us still sweltering, may they bring hope that cooler weather is just around the corner.

Each of these bags is made from a variety of wool, many of which were repurposed from thrift store finds.  The bag design is a simple lined pouch.  The machine embroidered leaf designs, made from cotton batik fabrics, are from Kathleen Parman’s Herky Jerky line.  I featured other designs by Kathleen in my January 20^th and February 10^th posts this year.  Each bag was finished with an I-cord made from a novelty yarn (or two) and each has a twisted yarn strap.

Happy Fall!