The Year of the Handbag–May (catch-up)–the patchwork bag
Unfortunately, the catch-up isn't happening QUITE as quickly as I had hoped, but we're getting there. On Friday, I decided to have a crafty day – I'd just finished a major writing project and I needed a break, yet to do something creative to help fire myself up. I decided on two projects and one was to finish a bag I started in June.
So this handbag was about trying a couple of new techniques – a) patchwork and b) putting a gusset in the bag.
Here's the end result:
Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it :) Here's how it happened -
a) Making the patchwork sides (patchworkers and quilters, you might not want to read this – or look closely at the bag…). So first I chose four pieces of material and decided on triangles as a nice, simple shape to start my patchworking career. Measured and cut them out – not very accurately. Then I started sewing them together. I decided on making six squares to make one patchworked side for the bag and then make the other side plain, but once done and laid out, I realised four was plenty big enough. With two squares already made for a second side, it seemed silly not to make the other two, so the bag has two patchworked sides.
b) putting the patchwork on the backing – I had some filling left from April's knitted bag so I put that on, then just used my calico to back it. Tacked it together and irones (filling is iron-on) and the two sides were made.
c) I thought about making just a gusset, then decided against it (so I still have that challenge to work on). Instead, I cut four sides out of the calico. Then I had to think about what the internal would look like (I prefer it to look neat as well) as decided that actually, what would be really cool would be the sew all the seams externally, then cover them so they became a bit of a feature. Brown, I decided. So I machine sewed the bottom and the sides to the patchwork, then handsewed the seams between the sides and trimmed so it would all be even.
d) The top I decided needed a zipper, so I cut the top in two, sewed in the zipper, then sewed it onto the patchwork.
e) I wasn't completely sure what to do with the handle, until I had the zipper in place and then I decided a simple fabric one would do. So I took a strip of the brown material I'd used in the patchwork and sewed it into a tube. I then put it in between the top strip and the side strips and hand-sewed them all together.
f) Finally was the edging. I used brown bias binding. I machine sewed all the edges (finished the last with just a few centimetres of cotton on the spool). Then I hand-sewed the corners. They aren't very neat – I wasn't able to accurately picture what I needed to do cutting-wise to make that happen.
So there it is – my patchwork bag. It's pretty good, I think.
As for the next handbag – it's turning out interesting. Very interesting. I have two words for you – paper mache…
