My favorite travel bag is ready for it’s first outing!
I think this is number 6 in my quest for the perfect travel bag? I have quite a pile.
This is the Weekender Travel Bag pattern by Amy Butler. The fabric, not surprisingly, is from a manufacturer in the UK.
The best thing about sewing for decades is having bits and bobs on hand in my studio. The zipper, nylon webbing, dee rings and green straps are from my private “collection.”
The guts of the bag show the tube map for the London Underground! I love to open a bag and find something interesting on the inside.
This bag fulfills my not-so-hidden anglophile obsession. So I made wallets.
Not just one, mind you.
Some other anglophile is going to get a big surprise!
Or maybe when the parrots sleep. Once again in the grips of some kind of obsession, another bag has sprung from my sewing room. I made a cool purse a couple of months ago.
I call him the Ay-yi-yi-yi guy. Because to me, that’s what it looks like he’s singing. But that’s not the point. Just got a bug up my bum to make another purse in this shape. The pattern is the Kimberly Bag, by Amy Butler.
I think all my bags should pose with the Shaka Fork Chef guy. He really does show them off to their best advantage. Did you notice that I put five feet on the bottom? I had some logic working at the time, I have no idea now what it was! But doesn’t it just make you happy, with the happy colors, pink and orange zippers, five feet and all? I added pockets on the inside so I have a fighting chance of finding my phone and my lipstick. Plus, it just seems wrong to make a bag and not have at least two zippers in it! I love putting in zippers, and I don’t care who knows it.
The best thing? If I have to carry around a couple dozen rulers, I will now have the perfect bag. (P.S. Carolann, this one’s for you!)
I sure wish I had kept that jeans purse I made in junior high. I think it would receive icon status, just for the “what the hell were you thinking?” reactions it would surely elicit. I know I wasn’t the only one who made one of those bags. Cut the legs off a pair of jeans. Sew across the bottom. Use one of the legs to cut a shoulder strap. Line it with horrific floral fabric. Take it to school and pretend that it makes you look cool.
Let’s just say that I like this bag way better than that any of my 1970’s creations. I got all inspired to make a cute bag by reading all the posts on blogs about Purse Palooza 2014. It’s all about sewing and it includes the word palooza. What more could a gal want?
My challenge was finding a bag that was more structured than slouchy. Although my posture may be slouchy, I prefer my bags to stand on their own. Upright and proud. I found it on Sew Mama Sew, the Blossom Handbag by Amy Butler. http://www.sewmamasew.com/2010/09/free-amy-butler-pattern-blossom-handbagshoulder-bag/
Yahoo, my Blossom Handbag is finished!
I found some really cute home dec fabric, and scoured my local (limited) resources for coordinates. I love the fabrics I used! I don’t think anyone here is looking for a pattern review, so the one thing I will say is that it is well written. My challenge came from a much different source: bulk. Bulky fabric, layers of interfacing, and then layers of that all folded up! My Viking is just a regular home sewing machine. If I were to take up serious bag-making, I would need a heavy-duty workhorse machine for the thick parts.
Out for a stroll through the garden.
When those uncooperative bits came along, I just turned off my machine and walked away for a while. Like a day or so. Then I would get all excited again and force-feed the pieces through my machine. More than once I had to remind myself that finished is better than perfect. Mainly because I knew that with this machine, certain parts of this bag could never be perfect.
My trusty sewing machine balked at many of the thick parts of this bag.
Now I’m going to show this puppy off! On Facebook, here on my unknown blog, out around town. Woo hoo, look what I made!
handmade by Carole Carr 