sewing

I have been sewing again

June 4, 2008 by Susanne 12 Comments

I already felt a little weird, I got my new sewing machine last summer, bought a lot of fabric, and vowed to finally make some of the projects I had planned to make for months and months. There never was time, every week I said to myself, “But next weekend…”. Then my purse broke. One of the handles has come off due to constant overload, and so, finally last weekend I started making my new purse. It’s the “A Day in the Park Backpack Tote“, a pattern by Liesl Gibson. I had bought the pattern back in July, and then ordered the fabric and notions from u-handbag. And then it all sat there for ages.

Since I now have a nice little roto-cutter and mat and have practiced using it the cutting out was going far better than I had feared. After a mere two hours or so I was done. (When I told my sister that I had a new cutter she said, “You’ll love it once you get used to it.” And I, of course, thought “What’s there to get used to it?” Well, let’s just say this time I only cut off slivers of paper from the patterns, my straight lines were actually straight. Ahem.) It’s a good thing that I spent another afternoon before that tracing the pattern pieces and cutting them all out.

The pattern, while great, has about a gazillion pieces and everything needs to be cut out something like four times. And then you’d theoretically transfer all the markings to the fabric pieces. Hahaha. On Monday evening I started actually sewing the bag, and wished for a walking foot right away. No matter what I do, the pieces a) never are of the same size, and b) never line up properly. The only thing that could change that is either a walking foot or hand-basting which is totally out of the question.

I won’t bother you with the whole saga of my sewing process, but I learned that it takes me only about six minutes to transfer my nice kitchen into this:

And about the same amount of time to take everything back. That took me by surprise I would have thought it took longer to fetch the sewing machine, chair, ironing board, sewing box, iron, extension cord, fabric and pattern from different parts of the house.

Yesterday I really threw myself into it. Apart from the little things I have to attend to like drink water, teach, do errands, and look after my son, I sew and sew. I’m always amazed at how little of sewing is actually sewing. It’s more like ironing, pinning, and trying to figure out what to do next with tiny sewing intermezzos. And in my case the sewing goes quite slowly. But then I figured out that while I started sewing about 30 years ago in all this time I did only two skirts, two pairs of pants, two shirts, about four curtains and about three bags. So I’m more of a long-time beginner.

Back to the bag. I spent about 40 minutes trying to pin the front panel to the side panel. The instructions are very clear. They say that you should make sure that the tops are lining up. That’s a very good thought, only I couldn’t make them line up. Just. Couldn’t. In the end they looked like this:

So I did what every sane person would do – I chopped the fabric that didn’t match on the front and back panels off. It was about half an inch front and back. That of course could have posed a problem with the lining. You see, it’s not that pretty when the lining is actually bigger than the outside bag. In the end it all turned out well because I had the exact same problem with the exact same amount of extra fabric when I sew together the lining. Off it came. If only I knew what I did wrong. I didn’t trace the pattern pieces wrong, and I didn’t forget to add seam allowances somewhere because they were already included in the pieces.

When my husband came to tell me he was going to bed I responded with, “Only two more seams.” but then I just went on and finished everything up. I hammered the rivets in at 11.30 at night. Thank God for a soundproof annex. Oh, and if you think of making one of these bags for yourself, go ahead, I highly recommend it though at times the thought of that many pattern pieces drove me slightly crazy, but I also recommend getting the hardware with the pattern. Really. The rivets I have were no fun to put in and they might fall out anytime soon. Other than that I love this bag.

And thanks to Joleo (because she wrote something about inserting zippers which I can’t seem to find anymore) I hand-basted the zipper into the lining and was rewarded with a nice zippered pocket for once.

I can’t tell you how happy I am about my new bag. Of course it’s raining now, not the best weather for a fabric bag but then – there will be summer days and when I wore it today to kindergarten I found it very, very comfortable to wear and I break out into a smile every time I see the fabric.

(Speaking of smiles, please remember that you have until the 7th to send me your posts or posts that you read for our monthly just post roundtables. (It’s creativemother AT web DOT de.) If you don’t know what the just posts are about you can click on any of the purple birds in the right sidebar.)

boy bag

October 24, 2007 by Susanne 12 Comments

Wordless Wednesday:

This was made by adapting tiny happy’s shoulder bag tutorial.

psychedelic bag

October 22, 2007 by Susanne 13 Comments

I’m so behind with blogging that I don’t want to do it at all. You probably know this feeling (otherwise it is hard to explain). Still I will write those posts. Only slowly. Sorry.

Though I haven’t been blogging much I have been busy as usual. Mostly knitting and a little sewing. To blog about the “psychedelic bag” now feels a little weird because it has been completed for a while now. I started thinking about it months ago, made most of it in August and finished it weeks afterwards.

For ages I have been thinking that my husband needs a bag. In fact, I’d say he needs a purse, only men don’t get to wear those without getting funny looks. But a messenger bag seems to be acceptable, I’m seeing men everywhere with bags that I’d call purse if they were for me. And it’s a good thing because I don’t know why a man is supposed to be able to carry everything in his pockets. Otherwise he has the choice between briefcase and backpack. My husband owns an enormous backpack that really works well if you want to take your laptop, your knitting, a book like the fourth Harry Potter, a notebook, and everything you happened to pick up while running errands, plus all the contents of my purse. At least that’s what I carried around in it the last time I borrowed it.

For everyday use my husband needs something to hold his wallet, keys, maybe a cell phone, and something to read. So I decided to design a bag for him. He was game and we went to the fabric store. Those of you who have checked out his blog psychedelic zen guitar know that he loves all things psychedelic (not psychedelic drugs though) and so his fabric choice holds no surprise.

finished bag

Before that I had literally spent days thinking about this bag’s design. It had to be big enough to hold a magazine, it should have interior pockets with and without zippers, everything should be easily accessible and at the same time safely kept inside. And there shouldn’t be velcro. So I made a sketch and I measured the magazine and the wallet and the cell phone and I almost wrecked my brain thinking about how everything should come together at the zipper. The main one that closes the bag.

So you can imagine that I was mightily pleased with myself when I almost finished this bag (for those of you who are new to this blog, “almost finishing” is a specialty of mine). Only to find that a) the flap is too short, b) the shoulder strap was fastened too high up and so c) it was impossible to sew everything together at the zipper. (Note to self: when making last minute changes such as adding strips of fabric to the top of the bag better take the time to think about which other parts of the design will have to be changed because of that).

So, of course, I decided to leave it as it was and sew everything shut by hand. That was very nice until I lifted the bag by the straps and with a horrible srrk-sound all the hand-sewn seams opened up again. Disgusted I threw it in a corner and put a heap of laundry on top of it. But then, eventually, I finished it. And I’m now quite pleased with it, also very happy that nobody will ever see the inside of that part with the zipper in it ever again (hopefully!). But every time I look at it there’s a little woman in my ear whispering, “But the flap is too short!” I’ll just go and tape her mouth shut.

For those of you who are interested in sewing details: