Or three…..or four! Ugh! Sometimes things just don’t go as planned. My friend Hazel saw my posting about the tote bag that I made for Katelyn (see my posting here) and she said she wanted one too. No problem! This will be the third time that I have made this bag so it should be a snap. Right? Turned out that it was anything but…..
First I cut out all of the pieces and then did all of the fusing of the interfacing. Next, I sewed the pockets together. Only I sewed one of the small pocket backwards!
Since I had already clipped the curves, there was no undoing this piece, so I just cut some more fabric and interfacing and tried again. Next I pressed the pockets flat and was ready to move to the next stage. Checking my work, I realized that some glue from the interfacing had transferred to the front of one of the small pockets.
Wow! Really? I can’t believe that I made another mistake with this. So frustrating….but again, I cut another pocket, lining and interfacing and forged ahead.
Once the pockets were all sewn, pressed and edge stitched I prepared to attach them to the bag body.
Again….yet another error!
Here is the pattern for the bag body. Note the red line….that is a placement guide line for the pockets. The last time I used the pattern I folded it at the red line. Needless to say, I bet you see what is coming next. I cut the body pieces on the red line….so they were too small. *sigh*!
Yeah, you can see that wasn’t going to work. At this point, I have no more additional fabric or interfacing. The fabric store that this came from is 25 miles away so I made plans to make a trip across town the next day. Fortunately, they had plenty of replacement fabric. A bit of pressing and cutting and I am ready to assemble my bag.
I would like to say that this is the last thing that went wrong, but that wouldn’t be true. As I sewed the pocket into the lining I kept thinking “Wow that seems really loud and crinkly”. Uh….yeah. I swear I was unconscious up until this point because I couldn’t get any of this right! It was crinkly because I bonded the lining and the pocket with fusible web, not fusible interfacing. Now I had a decision to make. The inside pocket was sewn in and there was no going back. I opted to remove the paper backing from the lining and move on.
This is certainly not my best work, but I did get it done. The inside pocket is crinkly sounding but it isn’t something that I am going to die over. I peeled the paper off of the back of the lining and unless Hazel decides to iron, cook or set her bag on fire, it shouldn’t matter too much!
The nice brown exterior is set off by the wine themed lining.
I did a leaf style stitch on the strap in green.
Just to prove that this project wasn’t going to be the death of me, I decided to make a small wallet to go with the bag. I used the Sew4Home pattern found here. I am fairly happy with the finished product but realized two things once it was done. First, I sewed the “ugly” side out of the webbing strap and D-ring. Second, I cut the fabric with design right side up not taking into consideration that once the wallet was folded the obvious pattern would now appear upside down.
I like it and it is cute, but I would be much happier if I had made these minor adjustments. However, I will make this wallet again and I already have fabric picked out for them!
