finally finished
It seems I've taken to posting monthly. I will need to work on being better about that.
I finally finished sewing my bag of the summer -- just days before September. I started it way back in June, about a week before my vacation; but about 2/3 the way from completion my sewing machine started making a horrible noise. So I decided that was Life (or something) telling me to put away working on the bag and start doing all that other stuff on my list to prep for vacation (you know like get the house clean, have clean laundry to pack, make sure Dog is set for his kennel visit). When I got back I took the machine in to the shop and they tried to recreate the noise with absolutely no luck so it came back home with me. But of course I still thought it was making that awful noise when I worked on the bag, it must have had something to do with sewing through 4 layers of canvas instead of 1 layer of corduroy like they did at the shop. Anyway, earlier this week the bag was staring at me and I decided I was either going to finish it or thoroughly break my machine trying. All in all I spent part of 4 different days working on this bag (one of them I was even helping a friend learn how to make her own tarot card draw-string bags).
The pattern is Wasp Bag from Machen/Machen and it's free :) I didn't totally follow her instructions, partially because I envisioned the straps and horizontal band differently than she did and partially I just mixed up the order of process to suit me (I made the straps last for example - oh I also did the interior pocket differently) but I loved the shape and am happy with the bag. It was my first time installing a magnetic snap and the first time I put a zipper ala Creative Little Daisy's Zippered Pocket Tutorial (of course I changed that a bit too, making the pocket a loose stand alone pocket just stitched in at the top). This was also my first time using fusible fleece interfacing; I felt it was a little bulky around some of the seams but I like the shape and relaxed body it gives. Nothing bugs me like a clear outline of purse contents in a flimsy fabric purse and so far the interfacing keeps this at bay.
I bought the purse-body fabric almost two years ago (at JoAnn's when they had a nice 45" canvas section), meaning to make a small messenger bag out of it - but then I found my go-to, very PNW Overland bag that was exactly the size I wanted and had many of the features I wanted as well as marked down because it was a discountinued colorway and my nearly signature lime-green. So I was happy when I saw the wasp bag pattern and realized this fabric would go great. The straps are made from leftover green canvas bought last summer at Ikea for a summer picnic blanket (that project, sadly is still waiting to be finished). I wish I knew the name of the blue lining fabric (a quilting cotton) so I could buy more of it since I love it. The orange polka-dot fabric was some scrap fabric hanging around.
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