I've had the past few days off from work, giving me lots of time to sew! My etsy store needs a little love. I haven't had a chance to get ready for fall so the shop needs to be cleaned up. I'll be taking down a lot of bags that are on there now to freshen up the place. I'm making a whole mess of new bags and here's what I've been working on so far.
I've been wanting to make some more of my recycled clutches to prepare for the holiday selling season. Here's a little peek at the bags I've made so far:
I'm used to sewing cotton. Cotton is incredibly easy to sew, even with multiple layers and interfacing. The recycled clutches use upholstery fabric, and two layers of a heavier weight interfacing meaning that it is harder to work with. My machine doesn't like it and I usually break a few needles in the process. So after the struggle, I wanted my regular cotton back. I started on some new bags to give my machine a rest.
I didn't get to sew anything else tonight because I was prepping bags. When I tell people I sew, I don't think they understand that most of the time, when you are actually creating something, you aren't sewing. Maybe a seam here and there, but it is mostly prepping, pinning, cutting and ironing. The sewing part is just another step. Today's prep took hours. Literally from 2 pm to 8 pm. of tracing patterns, cutting fabric, and ironing.
I've had this collection of fabric for over a year now, just wondering what to do with it. These are some of my favorite prints and I'm so sick of not using them. I think the colors are great for this season and even into winter.
These fabrics are so fantastic together and I thought about turning them into my "patchwork wristlet" but it is so much work to make the patchwork and these prints are so great that I can't cut them up. So they are becoming just a regular wristlet. I'm doing a little re-work to the pattern but I'm really excited for these guys.
I love when artists share their works in progress and the steps that they take to the finished product, so here's a little look inside my work.
Since I have six fabrics, there are going to be three different bags. Each bag gets a print for the outer bag, and the lining. I have enough fabric to make at least four of each kind. So it's a total of 24 body/lining pieces, 12 "wristlet" pieces, and 24 pocket pieces. This photo is the interfacing step, where each piece gets ironed on interfacing.
This step is very time consuming but totally worth it. The little bit of strength the interfacing adds makes a bag professional. I will be adding a heavier interfacing to one side of the bag because this wristlet needs it. Most of my bags do not need heavy weight interfacing, but every single bag should have lightweight interfacing in it.
This is where I left off for the night. All pieces interfaced and cut.Next step is adding the heavier interfacing to certain pieces then starting the pinning process.
I've been sewing bags for the past few days so tomorrow I'm going to try to do more work on my costume. Depending on how long that takes, I'll be able to do more on these bags.
trish stitched 