Happy New Year's everyone! I was planning on doing a little indoor shoot today of my new favourite makes to send this gawd-awful year off, but the hubs got really, really sick in the middle of the night last night, so he's in bed eating crackers and here I am.
Luckily, I actually have been sewing up a storm behind the scenes here and so I do have some other things that I could show you. So today, I'd be pleased as punch to show you the
Campfire Messenger Bag that I made from
Noodlehead.
I was actually commissioned about a month ago to make this bag. I really like the idea of designing and using a fabric bag, but if we knew each other IRL, you would know just how quickly I would get stains all over it.
I picked up the fabric at my local
Fabricland. They are a yellow and gray twill, and the other two fabrics are quilting cotton (both
Robert Kaufman if I recall correctly). I absolutely love the floral lining fabric. As for the metal hardware, I picked that up in a kit at the
Quilting Bee.
I made the purse with all the bells and whistles, only trading out the closures for magnetic snaps. In order to do this I had to add about four extra inches to the front flap.
Although I folded and pressed everything as per directions, my front pleated pouch looks a little lopsided.
I think the inset zipper turned out great but would be even better with a few more under my belt for practice. My top stitching and pressing could be tidied up a bit more here.
I think if I made this again, I would not interface any of the lining pieces. I think it just added a bit too much bulk for my liking and it sort of sits a bit funny at the bottom of the bag as a result. Additionally, one thing that I had a lot of trouble with were the little tabs that attach the metal rectangles to the sides of the bag. For the life of me I can't turn such a small tube that is interfaced. I ended up just sort of doing my own thing there.
For the back compartment, I just used a snap I had on hand.
Overall, I was really pleased with the pattern. This was my first time using a Noodlehead pattern and I was so excited that everything came together exactly as it should that I e-mailed Anna to tell her how happy I was. Everything lined up the way it should! This pattern is Carlee-proof!
I ended up picking up the
Petal Pouch and the
Envelope Clutch patterns as well and am super excited to dive into those for nice easy sewing pick-me-ups.
All in all, I would chalk this up to a sewing win. Again, it is not really my style because, with shoulder problems I try to keep a small bag so I don't have much weight to carry, but I was more than delighted to whip this bad boy up as I really learned a lot.
Here is hoping that in 2017 the world can become a little (or a lot!) less scary of a place. Happy New Year to you and your loved ones, and many happy stitches for 2017!
