Bag of the Week 46

Grip It

Each year my American Sewing Guild Neighborhood Group (we’re called Sharing Threads) has a challenge.  The topic is announced at the beginning of the year and the results are presented at the November meeting.  This year’s challenge was an ugly fabric challenge.  Everyone chose a piece of fabric from someone else’s stash (that had been deemed “ugly” by the owner).  The new owner then turned that fabric into anything they wished.

I wasn’t around for the fabric exchange but I wanted to participate in the challenge so I found a solution that fit the spirit, if not the letter, of the event.  A number of years ago I participated in another ugly fabric challenge and I had a piece of that fabric left.  This is a great example of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” because I think the teal cotton twill that was ugly to its previous owner is just lovely.  At the time, I was interested in discharge dyeing so I took the fabric and, using a stencil and Soft Scrub cleaner, discharged a design onto the fabric.  The piece you see above was another piece I dyed at the time but didn’t use in my final project.  So I used it in this years’ challenge.

I used Nancy Ota’s Grip It pattern but changed the dimensions to fit the fabric piece I was working with.  I used a coordinating stripe to bind top and bottom edges of the fabric before topstitching it onto the screen panel.  This pattern was so fast and easy.  I made this bag, start to finish (including time to gather all of the materials) in less than two hours.  It is a handy size for carrying books and papers.  It also felt good to use up a scrap that’s been hanging around my sewing room for years.

Unfortunately, a sudden illness kept me from going to the meeting this week where everyone presented their finished projects, and I was so disappointed to miss seeing them all.  I’ll have to take my bag to next month’s meeting where we will be planning all of the programs for the coming year and choosing the topic for our next challenge.  Can’t wait to see what that will be!