I am a bag lady.

I really like making bags, they're so satisfying. They're functional, relatively easy (once you work out how to decifer the pattern, and choose fabric that doesn't run in the rain), and you can put your own stamp on them.



Here's two more I've made in the last couple of weeks. Folklore Bag No. 326 3, a present for a friend.

And a bag from the latest issue of Sew Hip.

My brother got me a subscription to the magazine for my birthday, and although I really love reading it I very rarely make any of the free patterns. I would love to do one of the quilts they've featured in the last few issues, but it just seems a bit of a big scary project. Anyway, this bag is a present for a five year old - what five year old doesn't like ruffles?

I scaled down the pattern by a third, and put pleats in instead of gathering my ruffles, as they're backed with denim and were too stiff to gather. In the magazine they sewed a row of buttons along the top ruffle to hide the seam, but I didn't have enough buttons that matched. I made a flower using this tutorial instead, and mounted it on felt and put a brooch back on so it's detachable.

In other news, Munchkin also has bag lady aspirations. Why else would she have taken off her sleepsuit and her nappy and intentionally wee-ed all over her cot two nights running?

Tentacletastic

I think this is the best thing I have made. Ever. It is a present for a 4 year old who lives in Australia, but we'll get to see him in May when he and his lovely mom and dad and shiny new baby brother are over in Blighty.

I don't know him that well as he's done most of his living in Oz, so I had to email his mom to find out what he likes - owls, octopuses, kangaroos and penguins are some of his favourite things, apparently.

The bag is the messenger bag from One Yard Wonders (I swear I should be sponsored by them by now, the number of bloody bags I've blogged about), and the octopus is made of orange fleece. I traced his outline from a library book of munchkins (Counting in the Sea, 1, 2, 3! It's very good :), although I had to do a bit of photocopy reducing first as he was quite big. I thought it would look better if he had some tentacles up front and some behind rather than being one flat piece, so I did two tentacley pieces first, and then overlayed the body piece after.

I marked his eyes on with marker and then satin stitched over the top. The bag is lined with some stripy cotton that was a remnant from somewhere.

I took my time with it, and I think that really helped. I'm often tempted to cut corners in order to finish stuff quickly, but I was very slow and steady, and as a consequence the bag is well made and my applique is neat. Huzzah!

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?

Big Little Bag Giveaway

Yet another bag. And yes, it's from One Yard Wonders. How did you guess? :)

This is the Petite Diaper Tote, and it's not quite what I was expecting. Mainly because there's only one photo of it in the book, and it's pictured with the change mat unfolded, so you don't really get to see what the bag itself looks like.

Even worse, there are very few diagrams to accompany the instructions, so it was a bit of a pig to put together. They're currently looking for contributors to the next edition, and I seriously hope they improve the format, cause it's made me tear at my already thinning hair with every project I've completed.

Anyhoo, this was meant to be a present for a friend, and although it's turned out beautifully, because it isn't quite the animal I thought it was I've decided to make her something else. I thought the change pad folded up into the bag, rather than outside of it, and I thought there was a flap to go over the top rather than it being open with a tab to close it. Where I got these ideas from, I don't know :)

So I'm giving it away to one of you lovely lovely people. It'd be a great little bag to pop in the bottom of your pushchair or leave in the boot of the car for nappy emergencies. It'll comfortably fit a packet of baby wipes, a couple of disposable nappies (or one cloth one) and a snack and a beaker. It's the sort of thing that you should aim for when you're going through that 'I want to get back to using a normal handbag but I still need to carry a bit of baby gubbins around' transitional stage. I'm happy to send it anywhere in the world, so international peeps are welcome to enter.

All you need to do is post a comment below telling me... well, telling me anything really. I don't mind what you say, as long as it's not too rude :) Just say hello if you're not feeling very prosey. Or just put 'I want your bag please'. Whatevs. And I know it can be a bit of a pain to comment in Blogger sometimes, so if you want to enter by email you can, just drop a line to pickledweasel@btinternet.com.

You've got ages to enter because I'm away next week, so I'll draw a winner on Saturday the 27th of February. Good luck!

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...

Poppy Seed Head Messenger Bag

Grandma Pickledweasel very kindly bought me One Yard Wonders for Christmas, and last week I finished my first project from it. In the book it's a child's messenger bag, but I wanted to make an adult version as a present for a friend. She has two munchkins and is always running around here there and everywhere, so I thought it would be great as a 'Right, we're off to the shops' bag that she could bung her keys, wallet, tissues and a box of raisins in if she was just popping down the road.

I didn't change the size of the body of the bag, I just made the strap a bit longer. Actually, a lot longer - so long that you'd have to be fiddling around near your knees to get the bag open :D So I did a cunning thing and looped the strap inside the bag and stitched it. I'm going to get a D ring (is that the right word?) to hook on to the loop, and then give her a little clippy key ring to go with the bag. She can put the clippy key ring on her keys, and then whenever she uses the bag she can just clip the key ring to the D ring, and she won't have to root around at the bottom of her bag for her keys.

The fabric was from Ikea, and I used half a metre, which was the princely sum of 50p in the sale. It was the last piece in the shop, and I'm gutted there wasn't more. I did get some more fabric from the same range but with a different print - much larger and more abstract, but not as good as the poppy seed heads. I just about managed to squeeze the pattern pieces for the outside of the bag on to the fabric I had, so I line it with something else, and I used a linen chambray that you might recognise from Munchkin's Liberty wrap dress.

The project was pretty easy to follow, although I could have done with a few more diagrams and a bit less text, but that's just the way my brain works. I did have to completely reposition the velcro though, even though I followed the instructions on where to place it to a tee.

Only problem now is that I like it so much I don't want to give it away!