Friday Night Sew-In

The strap on the purse I made in 2013 wore out. I still loved the purse -  it was the right size and I'm really happy with the way the three interior pockets help me keep track of things, but the strap and outside were too threadbare to take out in public any more.

So I bought some canvas fabric, and a few weeks ago I disassembled the old purse, made a new canvas exterior, and spent a Friday night putting it back together.

I'm really happy with how it turned out!  Re-using the old interior saved a lot of materials and time. The only hitch was that the new exterior turned out slightly bigger than the old one, so if you look closely you can see that I had to ease the together fairly aggressively at the top  edge.  I also made the strap a bit too long.  But overall, I feel like my favorite purse has a new lease on life.  Hopefully it will last another two and  a half years!

Bigger, better buttercup bag

Earlier this week I finished making my second buttercup bag.  This one is larger and has a zip closure, an inside zipped pocket, and two elasticized inside pockets.  I love it!  It is large enough to hold everything I need on a daily basis (wallet, sunglasses, pencil case, ipod, home and work keys, phone, chapstick, and advil) PLUS my Kindle in its case, and zip closed all at the same time.  Plus all of the pockets make it easy to find what I need.

The buttercup bag pattern is from Made by Rae here.  I used the small free version and enlarged the pattern pieces to 130%.  (I made the smaller original version exactly as written in the pattern here.)  I used this tutorial for the zippered closure.  There are a bunch of tutorials for the inside zip pocket out in blogland, and I just winged the elastic pockets.

A purse and a skirt!

 At the beginning of the summer (around this time) I started feeling like I had too many projects and too much stuff and I made an intention to work through my UFO list and get some stuff finished.  My loose plan was that I should finish two projects for every one I started.  Since then, I have not finished a single thing on my UFO list, but I have started and finished the Lone Star baby quilt for my soon-to-be-niece, the Kindle case for Robert's birthday, this little purse, and the navy skirt at the bottom of this post.  I've also started a larger version of the purse because this one is too small.  As you can see in the picture below, it is overfull with my wallet, ipod, keys, chapstick, phone, and my university wallet/keychain.  With these things in it, it will not close, and I also need it to fit my sunglasses. 

 The purse is the Buttercup Bag from Made by Rae.  It's a free pattern, and very cute.  My plan is to use this one for going to the symphony and other date nights, when I don't want to carry a huge bag and don't need to have so many things with me.

I'm planning some significant enhancements on the larger version - a zipper closure, an inside zipped pocket, and one or two inside pockets with elastic on the top.  I'm not quite sure how to explain the elastic pockets, but I've seen in on some tote bag patterns, and I think it's just the thing to make 3-dimensional space inside the pockets and prevent things from falling out of them at the same time. 

Here's my navy skirt.  This has actually been on my future projects list for a while, and I used some really great coupons at Joann to get the fabric and elastic really inexpensively.  The whole skirt (including thread that I didn't have in the right color) was about $10.  I expected the skirt to go together in an hour or two, but as usual everything took longer than I expected.  I put in pockets and tried to use the rolled hem foot on my sewing machine to do the hem.  Even though I practiced on scraps, the hem just didn't turn out.  I need lots more practice before I can use that tool on a garment.  It took quite a while to pick out the rolled hem and re-do it with my usual "turned under twice and topstitched" hem. 

I couldn't get a picture of myself with the skirt on, but here it is.  The elastic is two inches wide and sits (pretty loosely) on my hips.  I probably should have cut the elastic for the waistband about two inches shorter, and I might go back later and do that, but for now I'm too lazy and it works fine the way it is, especially if I wear a longer top over it. 

Two Purses!

I spent my Martin Luther King Jr morning doing a bit of housework and my afternoon making two purses. On the right you can see my Italy purse, now finished! I used about half a yard of some yellow seersucker that Robert's Grandma gave me last summer for the lining (and I still have almost 3 1/4 yards left!) The color is just perfect, and it's nice and light so I can see what's inside. I put in a zippered pocket on one side:
I feel like I really expanded my sewing skills with this purse: I used FOUR different feet on my sewing machine - regular, zipper, butttonhole, and button. This was my first time to use the button foot (on my Mom's machine, you don't use a foot for buttons, but this was nice, since I didn't have to worry about holding the button in place) and the buttonhole foot (my machine is fully automated for this, but it took me a while to figure out how to make it work. My mom's machine, you mark the length of the button on the fabric and do each step in turn). It was the second time I've used the zipper foot, but the first time without Evelyn's supervision.

The zipper turned out pretty well. There's a little bend in the stitching where the zipper pull was when I sewed it, but my thread matches pretty well, so it's not too obvious.

I wanted a top closure, but I didn't want to mess around with a zipper and then have to figure out how to sew it nicely into the outer bag, so I used a cute flower button I found at Joann's, and made a reinforced buttonhole tab on the other side:
The other purse was so super quick and easy that there's been some debate over whether it counts as a finished object. I think it does. I found this tutorial while I was poking around the interwebs for purse pocket ideas for my Italy bag, so when I was at Joann's buying notions I picked up 1 1/4 yards of this floral fabric on sale so I could try it. I didn't even pre-wash or finish the edges! My one quibble with this purse is that the knots and tails made in the construction are now inside the bag, along with whatever items you're carrying. But for 5 minutes of work and less than $5 worth of fabric, I really can't complain!
Edit: As Evelyn pointed out, she helped me with the zipper on another project, not the buttonhole. Next time I'll try to do a better job proofreading ...