On my January list of things I wanted to get done, this bag is #7. I’ve written about wanting to make bags almost since the very beginning of this blog. And some years I make some and a lot of years I do not. But this bag kit was purchased with a Craftsy class many years ago when I was into Craftsy classes. Unfortunately, I was overwhelmed by the complexity of this project and I let it go many years. I kept the kit together and harbored hope that one day I would be able to do it. During the pandemic a group of us ladies met on zoom a lot and out of those meetings bag making was discussed. Not everyone wanted to venture into it but some did and some were already well into it. We created a Friday night group called The Bag Ladies. In the beginning, it was supposed to be once a month. But it quickly increased to every Friday. Slowly, as time went on and the world opened up more we found ourselves meeting less and less and we disbanded the group.

However I had started this project and it was beyond my bag making skills. The project itself is difficult but I also had to look for all the parts to the kit and luckily, I was able to gather them all together. I worked on this a bunch in 2021 and then put it aside when life got busy. That’s the worse thing to do with a project as complex as this. Its already a hard bag just by itself. but when I put it aside and then have to remember where I left off, what I did and what I still needed to do just made it all the more difficult. Since this is number 7 in my list I made it a mission to not start #8 until this project is done!

Here are some progress pics of the pages I put together.

And once those were done I added velcro to each side.

I’m really thrilled with how it’s coming along. and while it is difficult, my machine is handling things like a pro and as long as I take each step one by one and watch the craftsy class while I’m doing it I am finding I’m able to do it.

I find bag making takes a lot of focus and I couldn’t do this bag and meet up with the bag ladies. I needed to focus and concentrate which are two things I am unable to do while my friends and I are on zoom chatting.

I found it hard to do the binding on this end. It’s done but I don’t like how it turned out. I took the raw edges together and with the side at the bottom machine bound the raw edges of the binding to the raw edges of bag smooshing all the layers as much as possible with my stiletto. That part was easy but I had to pay attention and not make my quarter inch too big by mistake, especially around the corners which I tend to cut through too quickly. The part that was hard was doing the other side. I was able to pull the binding over and it covered everything nicely but if I sewed it on that end we would be able to see the stitching on the other side. I didn’t want that. So I stitched in the ditch on the already sewn side and hoped it caught the binding to secure it on the other side. It did mostly and where it did not I just resewed from this side. It worked but where I was blindly securing it didn’t line up always right and so it looks wonky. If you look closely at the picture above you can see how the bottom binding has more pulled over than on the other parts.

There must be some trick to it that I’m not aware of. Well that side is done now and I’m not picking out. But hopefully I will learn a better way to do these bindings in the future.

Stay crafty friends!

Melanie