Today I am wearing carrying a new bag – just what I need! This bag has been many days in the making, I struggled a bit with the instructions and the making of the bag, but it looks ok (from a distance). It is a lovely shape, and I had to master the art of chenille to make it. Before I launch into the making process, I am also wearing tiger striped machine knitted socks, the Elle pants and Susan top from StyleArc, a necklace made from yarn from Dairing, and the jacket from a pattern and yarn from Dairing. This jacket is immensely comfortable, and very warm, and I haven’t worn it nearly enough.

Back to the bag. It started life as a kit from the Quilt and Craft Fair and really falls into the “what was I thinking?” category. I looked at it for a day or two, read the instructions a pile of times and did the dive in thing.

The first thing was to sort the fabric into layers. I was kind of hoping that it would all be cut into the right sized pieces, but that wasn’t to be. OK, I can cut…

Then I had to make the chenille. Easy? No! A whole pile of diagonal lines had to be sewn onto the fabric. I suspect that most people could just do this, but I began to draw them to keep the lines parallel. This was tedious, so then I remembered my simflex thingy. This let me measure a few lines at once. Problem is that it moves slightly.

Anyway, off I went, drawing endless lines and then sewing along them. Half way through I decided this was nuts and did a few freehand lines – ahem, not the best. I was investigating my various feet to see if any of the were wide enough when I remembered that little bent doodad. It’s a seam guide and I don’t think I realised that it could be used to follow lines of stitching. It had taken me about 2 hours to do half of the sewing and 10 minutes to do the second half! Doh!!

Once all the layers were stitched, they had to be cut and the fabric washed with towels to rough up the edges – this is the chenille. There were two pieces of this and they had to be woven together. So tedious… Then I had to cut out the bag. I looked at it for 2 nights, too afraid to cut.

Anyway, I did cut it out and began to make the bag. Did I say the instructions were hard to follow? I think I made up some of the construction, but I did finish up with a bag and it doesn’t look too bad.

GCC:

Steps yesterday: 20,336 (ok)

Average: 24,252 (g)