Sewing @ MindSay

I am now 30.  I have yet learned to do things properly from the beginning.

I was making a purse/bag last night and skipped several steps - ironing my fabric, measuring twice and cutting once.  Now I get to redo the whoooole thing.  Grrrr........

Maybe that'll be my goal before I turn 31 - to learn from my mistakes.

But the fabric is really cool - it's black with grey spiders and spiderwebs.  I got it from the Hallowe'en section, but it's gonna be an everyday bag.

My ear is better now, it only hurts if touched in one place, as opposed to hurting without being touched or hurting really, really badly no matter where touched.

So today, I busted out the creativity. A few days ago I wrote a little story about a firefly and I worked on animating it to put up online for 90% of the day. I have two more slides to add to the story before I render it and then upload it.

The other 10% of the day I spent finishing an art deco/quilted pillow (I am trying to take pics right now but the program won't open). It still needs to be stuffed and sewn closed.

Well, the cam isn't going to work while I am typing into mindsay, so I will return to upload the pics. Really. I will.

So, what's going on in the land of stacy you ask?  Well, I think my mother has had some sort of mental break.  The rest of the world seems to think this is my problem to solve.  Whereas I think the only problems I should be solving have to do with sewing.

I've adopted one of her cats, much to the non-happiness-making of my boyfriend.  The new cat spends her time huddled against the toilet, mewing at me when I pass by the loo and trying to avoid my other cat. 

All in all, I'm just really trying to forget everything that's happening on the other side of town.

On a good note though - I'm two steps closer to an engagement ring.  Only 53 more to go...or so it seems.

So I finished my Amy Butler Sophia Carry-All bag. It wasn't as tough as I expected it to be. The worst part was drawing and cutting all of the pieces and layers and layers of interfacing. But once that was done, construction was relatively easy. As per web reviews, I used a denim needle on my machine and it worked very nicely.

As for the piping I went ahead and bought pre-made piping, since that was just easier. Once I discovered my zipper foot, it went it in quite well. I wanted to install purse feet on the bottom, but they were all out at G-Street and I didn't feel like waiting to order them online.

The only other modification I made to the pattern was extending the straps by a few inches for a longer drop, and making the pockets in thirds so that there are 3 on each side rather than 2. This way they perfectly fit my wallet, PDA, phone, and work ID.



Looks a bit like a watermelon I suppose...

My next version of this bag is for my friend Becks - I've imagined a denim version of the bag with a baseball print lining, and she'll provide the curly W patch for the outside. It will be the perfect bag for her to take to Nats games! I'm most excited!