Folklore Bag: Round Two

After my wrangling with unweildy top bands before, I was determined to make the Folklore Bag again from One Yard Wonders, because I wanted to contribute a non-wonky version to Finny's sew-along I and thought if I could iron out the problems with the pattern, it would actually be a really nice bag.

And it was :) It was a lot easier once I followed the corrections on the publishers website - although the top band pattern pieces are now too long, so you need to do a bit of fiddling to get them right. The fabric I used is a lot lighter than the one I used first time, which made it easier to sew, but means the bag is a bit floppier. If I did it again I would use interfacing on the straps as well as the body of the bag.

I'm guessing you're wondering about the fabric...it's from a well known londony textile company, let's call them, errrrmm, Biberty. Except it's not officially from Biberty, because it was £1 a metre from a magic fabric shop. There's another Biberty print on the other side of the fabric, a brown floraly print- the magic fabric shop man said that when they've finished one print run and are due to start another print run with a different pattern, they take some fabric that's scrap and run it through the machine to clean the inks, hence pattern on both sides.

I thought Biberty fabric for £1 a metre was a bit too good to be true, and it was. Proudly parading my lovely new bag at Centre Parcs last week, I noticed the fabric went a bit darker when rain drops hit it. And it didn't get lighter when it dried. In fact, it was brown and splodgy. Because the ink from the floral print on the other side was bleeding through :( It now looks like somone's liberally sprinkled soy sauce all over it. I might just put it in the washing machine to see what happens, it couldn't get much worse.

Shall I make the bag again? Will it be third time lucky? Or should I just sack it all off and get one from Primark?