bag

Michael’s First Fathers’ Day

Posted on by courtneyleeweaver

Michael is a wonderful husband and father. He was already pretty amazing and then our daughter was born and I’m in awe of how natural he is as a father.

I really wanted something special for him for Father’s Day and I was already planning on making the Messenger Bag for him so decided to get my act together and make it for Father’s Day.

The vote came in at Star Wars being the appropriate nerd fabric to use on the bag. I ordered the storm trooper and Darth Vader fabric at Spoonflower and got plain black canvas at Spotlight. I chose blue quilting cotton for the lining and buckle flaps because it was an appropriate Star Wars colour. Of course, Spotlight brought out Star Wars themed fabrics the week before Father’s Day which would have saved me from having to order from Spoonflower but I guess that is life!

Once again, the cutting out took the longest time by far! Once all the cutting was done I had all the sewing finished in one night (after putting Baby Girl to bed, getting and eating dinner and before Baby Girl woke up for her next feed – so about 2.5 hours I guess).

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I added a little inscription to personalise it further.

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We gave it to him along with some books and framed photos of the little one and he has been using it since. Abigail thought it was very tasty!

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I am going to make him some matching accessories such as an iPad cover. I made one for his dad for the day but forgot to take photos!

A geeky satchel

Aside posted on by courtneyleeweaver

My next bag project is going to be “Melly’s Messenger Bag” for my husband.
It looks like this will fit his essential items that he takes to work each day into it pretty well – namely, his iPad.

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Even though my husband is not averse to hot pink, I would love to use a fabric that is something a bit more unique and appropriate to him. Being an IT consultant with a science degree and a love of science fiction, I have been looking for appropriately geeky fabric to use on this bag.

I have found this great site called Spoonflower which will create fabric for you and that I can choose from other people’s designs! There is actually a “Geek” category on the site. The problem I am having is that I can’t decide which to go with!

Help me out here, dear readers! I put it to your vote.

Should I go with Dr Who, Star Wars, StarTrek, Lego or Tetris?

Comment a link to any particular designs that stand out to you that I should consider. It needs to be a home decor weight fabric like canvas.

My first bag

Posted on by courtneyleeweaver

You may remember that I purchased “Sew Cute to Carry” at the WA Craft Fair a few weeks ago. I had great fun heading to the Spotlight sale the following weekend when they had 40% off all fabric and I bought all that I needed to make my first bag.

All of the patterns in the book rated for their simplicity or lack thereof. Having learnt my lesson from high school sewing class, I chose one of the simplest in the book to start off with. It’s called the “Shopaholic Shopper”.

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I found this Parisian themed red fabric at Spotlight so I then decided to stay with the French theme and have navy and white stripes instead of the yellow and red pattern. I chose canvas as my fabric as it should give the bag some strength.

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The bag pattern called for the taupe pattern fabric to be used as the bag lining but I really like bag linings to be made of light colours so that you can see what is inside. There is nothing worse than black bag lining when you have a black wallet, black phone case, black glasses case and so on and so forth! I was devastated when Oroton changed their bag linings from cream to brown. For this reason, I decided to make my lining from more white canvas instead of the red Parisian print. It also seemed a waste of the nice red fabric!

I found making this bag to be relatively easy. I used baking paper to trace the pattern out of the book and then made a more permanent pattern out of calico. Then I did all my cutting out.

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Then I simply constructed it as per the instructions and it started to look like it was supposed to pretty quickly! Excuse me in the photo – I do all my sewing after baby girl goes to bed each night so pyjamas are the order of the day!

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As you can see, I had some assistance from Sushi!

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I am almost finished but I bought polyester webbing instead of cotton as Spotlight didn’t have any cotton webbing in stock. Now that I have seen my almost finished product, I just can’t use the polyester webbing as it doesn’t feel right with the cotton canvas. I have ordered some cotton webbing from eBay so I will wait until it comes to finish the bag but here is where I am currently at.

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Lessons learned from this project:

My top stitching is quite wobbly – I will be googling to find out the secret for sewing in a straight line.
I love my walking foot! A walking foot is something originally used for quilting but these days is often used for thick or difficult fabric. I had multiple layers and a fleece interface and it made sewing through that a breeze.
I really enjoyed making this!