A few updates!

Here are a few updates on some projects:

1. Necklace: 

The necklace I made my mom may have not seemed like too much of a disaster at the time but it has slowly turned into one. As my mom wore the necklace more and more, a bead would fall off here and there....and finally a whole cluster of beads fell off while she was at the movie theater last weekend. 

The beads that fell off

Later this afternoon I am going to try to repair her necklace since she has managed to find all the beads that have fallen off. :) 

2. Coasters: 

Last weekend Anna came over and we finished putting the felt on the coasters. They turned out really cute, and have already become very useful at my house. 

3. Awesome Bag:

So I last left you with the machine taken apart, and the project on hold. On Thursday I ended up taking out all of my stitching on my lining material and trying to make the lining about a half inch wider. After I did this I successfully sewed all the layers of the bag together. 

Finally looks like a bag!

I have to say besides my meltdown on the machine last week my sewing skills are getting much better. My ironing skills- not so much. I used interfacing as my lining fabric for the strap because I ran out of the material I used for lining for the bag. My mom luckily had extra interfacing that she let me use. I went to iron it because it was really wrinkly and I melted the interfacing onto the iron (not so awesome). So I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get melted interfacing off the fabric. 

My iron mark on the interfacing

 I successfully machine sewed the strap of the bag pretty easily, but it required about 12 inches of hand sewing once it had been turned right side out. My hand sewing looks exactly the same as it did in 4th grade- terrible! I started hand sewing it but then I conned my mom into finishing the hand sewing (THANKS!) because my disastrous sewing was just ruining the look of the bag. :) 

It looks almost finished...but one large hurdle to go!

I know my measurement are not always accurate, in fact I realized I cut the strap a whole inch shorter than it was supposed to be (This was really due to my lack of reading directions, not really my measuring). Once I finished the strap I realized if I attached the strap to the bag how it instructs in the tutorial, I will not be able to even fit my hand through the strap. So instead I have decided to only put 2 or 3 buttons on each side and make the strap only go down to the middle of each side of the bag. 

On Friday I attempted to start making the buttonholes. First, my mom and I spent an hour pulling apart our house to find the correct parts for the machine to make the buttonholes. We finally found them in the bottom of a bin in my closet under my John Mayer t-shirt from a concert in 2003 (Obviously we are super organized around here). After this, I was super excited to attempt to make buttonholes. I made a little sample swatch of fabric to practice on, I read the directions 4 times (which is a lot for me) and started the attempts. I know this will be shocking for you, but every time I  followed the directions, I ended up with a big ball of  thread that looked nothing like a buttonhole. I have to be skipping a step, or missing something but I have decided it is something that is not included in the directions because I have followed those exactly. Later today I am going to spend some time looking on youtube and google for more complete instructions for the buttonhole. I am still pretty convinced that I am going to be able to make a buttonhole even though my mom is convinced it isn't going to happen. I will admit every time I try the buttonhole I get super excited that it is going to work, like a kid on Christmas morning, and then it fails and I feel like I got a lump of coal. 

My sample fabric for testing buttonholes.

3 attempts...3 knots of fabric, 0 buttonholes

4th time was not the charm either...

Hopefully it will be like Christmas morning around here soon. Look for some other craft attempts this week in addition to finishing the Awesome Bag. 


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