Welcome New Friends and Sewing with Friends!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by for the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day, I had so much fun finding new blogs and entering giveaways, I even won one myself! Super awesome. Maybe the best part is my blog has grown to 18 followers now, I'm practically bursting at the seams with excitement. I'm so happy you new readers saw something you liked in my short history to take a chance on following me. Okay, enough gushing, I'll play it cool now.  

I haven't had too much time for sewing these past two weeks, we went on a short camping trip before Memorial Day and then I have been working like a fiend since we got back and have only  been able to fit one day of sewing in the last two weeks! But it was a good day, so it made up for the dry spell before.   My best friend Alicia is a great knitter and decided she needed a new bag to hold her current projects and some extra yarn. She picked up this pattern ages ago and we finally got around to getting it sewn up. 

It was a pretty easy sew, just a little time consuming. She literally spent the whole day with me, from noon until 10 pm, although we did have to go to the fabric store and stop for lunch, we were probably only sewing for 4 or 5 hours. (Which still seems a bit excessive for just a bag, but good company/gossip makes the time go by fast) The 7 outside pattern peices all have to be interfaced, and then you layer an additional 2 kinds of interfacing in the body, so this bag has some serious heft to it. Once we got everything cut out and interfaced things went much faster, it's just a basic bag pattern so there wasn't anything too head scratching, but sewing through all those layers of pellon and making due sew in interfacing instead of fusible slowed us down considerably. The most frustraing part of the project was the completely erronious yardage requirements on the envelope. I understand giving a little wiggle room, I appreciate that, but when a pattern calls for 7/8 of a yard so you can cut the 31" straps on the lengthwise grain instead of just placing them along the length of the fabric is ridulous. All you need is 1/3 of a yard to cut those straps and you would still have a sizeable chunk leftover, instead of almost 2/3 of a yard acording to the envelope. Times 2 because there are straps AND  contrasting straps. Almost a 1 1/3 yd extra is unnaceptable to me. End rant. 

When we finally got it all sewn up we could see that it is huge. HUGE. The more I think about it the more I wonder if it will be too big to just carry around as a project bag, not only is it big it is sturdy, but hopefully it will work well enough for her to pack up all her things to take to knitting circle.  While trying to take these dismally poor photos late at night I stuffed all the yarn I have, enough to make two hats for everyone I know, which is about twenty skeins (hats are as far as my knitting skills go) and it didn't even make a dent in the bag, so I stuffed it with some fabric remnants to try and plump it out to it's full capacity.  It still could have taken more.

 

Here is my adorable friend modeling her new bag! Looks good on her, I know. Alicia was very sweet in taking my daughter Lily's council in selecting the colors and I think they turned out great. I think Lily might have selected polka dots, that girl is wild about polka dots.  

I think sewing with friends is probably the best way to sew, so thanks for coming over Alicia! Next time I attempt to pick up the knitting needles again you can expect some frustrated phone calls!