I took five days off of work for the purpose of sewing. Yes, I took vacation to sew. The kids still went to school and I sewed.
I did have a little bit of an agenda. The first task was to create little drawstring bags for my eldest's Kindergarten-Prep graduation. Nine kids (including her)....really, how hard could it be? This was a free Craftsy class (http://www.craftsy.com/class/bag-making-basics-drawstring-bag-and-bucket-bag/149) intended for beginners. In fairness, the pattern is NOT hard. Just some straight cutting and straight sewing.--OK, I'll be honest. I totally suck at both of those. I managed to complete ONE bag on Wednesday. In fairness, I did manage to cut out 4-1/2 other bags. One of them I cut a part of the exterior too short so had to do some creative grafting. My option was to buy another fat quarter, but this was or 5-yr-olds. I also managed to screw up the layout (and therefore cutting) of the lining for (of all people) my daughter's bag. Thankfully, the exterior was John Deere fabric I had from another project and not a fat quarter. Oh, the other "fun" part: the drawstrings. The drawstrings are a total pain and I swear it took almost as long to pull them right-side-out as it did to sew the pieces together. Thursday, I managed to end the day with seven completed bags which left me with only two on Friday (my deadline). SUCCESS!
The weekend was a bit of a bust since we spent Saturday at an airshow and Sunday is a bit of a lazy day. I did break out the pre-cuts I purchased for a "Jelly Cakes" quilt. The fabric is Sun-Kissed Spa by Michele D'Amore for Benartex. I ordered it in 2012 (I only know this because I ran across the packing slip yesterday). I have it laid out and hope to have it all pieced together today. I will need to buy the fabric to put a border on it and the backing / binding. We'll see how the day goes if I do that today or schlep the kids to find it next weekend. Guess ther eis always the Internet route, too. Here is how it's currently laid out.
It ends up being short of a queen size, so I think I'm going to put a border around it. I think I'm going to edge the blocks with a brown--maybe a solid Kona just to frame it and then a thicker border around that--just not sure if I want print or plain or which color. Then to figure out the back. If I go out, maybe will see if the LQS has anything from this line. Though, guess I better get sewing if that has any chance of happening.
You're a better person than I. I would have just bought a roll of cording for the strings. But the fabric ones are super cute.
ReplyDeleteI love drawstring bags but making the casing and then threading the damn cord is SO ANNOYING it prevents me from making them very often. I have to psyche myself up for it.
http://ayumills.blogspot.com/2008/09/tutorial-reversible-patchwork-bag.html
That's the tutorial I used. I made it once with decent results. My errors were all in the casing (too tight).
The bag is *cute*, but, man that looks like a painful casing and cording. These bags were much simpler for the casing and to make it reversible would either be done by making sure you measure really well and leave an opening in both the lining and the exterior or by making the casing at the top where it would be easier to leave an opening on both sides. Threading the cord / string was pretty simple b/c I could just put a safety pin on the end and push it through--that was the easiest and most satisfying part of the whole thing.
ReplyDelete