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?

Faffy Folklore Bag

This is my second project from One Yard Wonders, and it's a birthday present for my brother's girlfriend. The fabric was from Ikea, and it was 99p a metre, like the stuff I used for the messenger bag. The print on it is huuuuge, and I wasted quite a lot of fabric because I wanted specific bits of the pattern for the front and back, and just plain cream for the bands at the top of the bag, but at 99p a metre I really don't care :)

(warning - this is a long faffy explanation. For the short version, skip down to the sentence marked *) Things were going fine until I came to join the top band to the lining - you sew the exterior panels together and attach a top band, and then you sew the lining panels together and attach a top band, and then sew them altogether with the straps sandwiched in between, if that makes sense. The lining pattern piece was slightly smaller than the exterior pattern piece, but you used the same top band pattern piece for inside and out. So when I came to join the lining to the top band, the band was too big. So I had to make it smaller. But then when I came to join the inside to the outside, the bands didn't match. So I had to put an ugly great pleat in the band on each side of the bag :( Pah!

I've since found out there are corrections to the pattern on the publisher's website. The pleats on the exterior have been widened, so that presumably when you sew them they make the inside and outside the same width. Although this would mean the top bands would still be too big, but at least you could make them smaller and then everything would be the same size. Confused? All you really need to know is:

*It went wrong but now I know how to fix it the next time I make it. And I will make it again, it's a lovely bag. I stuffed it full of organic chocolate and a cute purse I bought from Spunky, and posted it a couple of days ago, so the birthday girl should have it by now :) And I've posted my pics up on Finny and AfricanKelli's One Yard Wonders Sew Along group on Flickr - the bag is their project for Feb. Right, on to the next project! I have no idea what's wrong with me this month, I have been ridiculously productive...