The (Wonky) Circle Bag

Here's the latest! This fabric probably looks familiar; I used it for The No Cash Wallet. The lining fabric is the same pale blue with black, yellow, and white branches that I used for the wallet lining. All of the fabric is from Hancock, but that's practically a given.

I used Simplicity's Sewing for Dummies patten 7161, which was a Christmas gift from my sister-in-law. It's been a couple years, but here is my first project completed from that pattern! I made bag "C."

OK, this is a "for Dummies" pattern, so it should have been easy, right? Wrong. I felt like a dummy trying to make this thing. The pattern calls for a fleece lining (in addition to the interfacing) to add a little bit of padding to the bag. That was a disaster! Admittedly, some of the problem with the fleece may have been my fault. I skipped the first step (fuse the interfacing to the outer layer of fabric) because I thought that I could just baste the interfacing to the outer layer at the same time as the fleece. Nope. The fleece was too stretchy and it just didn't work out. (In my defense, I don't know if it would have worked out any better if I had fused the interfacing to the outer layer first. The fleece may still have been wacky.) So I decided to try some flannel in place of the fleece. I have used flannel as an inner layer before (see every bag I have ever made), and while there is some stretch to flannel, I thought it would work better than the fleece. Nope.

I was so annoyed by this, I moved on to the steps that covered the lining pieces because those were all regular cotton. Stitching the bag and handle linings together was simple and didn't take too long. While I was sewing those, I had a small brainwave about the outer pieces--why not just forget about basting the fabrics and just use regular length stitches to sew the pieces together? I ripped out the basted stitches and resewed the pieces with regular stitches. It worked much better! The basting stitches I was trying either didn't have the right thread tension or length or maybe it was just the operator who was ridiculous.

I also added the pattern recommended Velcro closure at this point. Take that, pickpockets! (My cash is safe, thanks to the power of NASA technology: Velcro.)

The other major fiasco with this bag was the handle. Again, the operator just didn't quite get it. When I looked at the picture and read the instructions, I was a little confused and kind of made up what I was supposed to do to finish the handle. The PIC saw it and said, "That is the worst piece of junk handle I have ever seen in my life--EVER!" He then explained to his dumb wife how the dumb handle was supposed to be finished. I finally finished it, but the handle still looks a little rough, thanks to my sub-par stitchery. Not the best looking project I have ever completed, but it gets the obligatory C- for being able to hold stuff in the end. And if I ever make this same style again, I have it figured out, so it should look better than this one.

A'ight, I'm out!