Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching celebration! 
This is a special weekend because it's Father's day and also my birthday. I'll be taking my Dad out for a special lunch today and remembering how blessed I am to have such a wonderful DAD!

At some point today I'll be enjoying some slow stitching time and conversation with Dad. In addition to visiting with his kids and grandkids (who adore him), Dad loves to spend time playing games, so I might need to put the stitching aside for a while!

Yesterday was also a day of celebrating - my friend Debby organized a sewing party for me with a mystery project, which was a bag with a measuring tape snap closure. Making 3D projects is a little challenging for me since my brain doesn't process the steps well, but I managed to keep up fairly well and am delighted with my finished product. 

Of course I made the  construction process a little longer by doing the quilting by hand. I can't help myself because I love it! You can maybe see that I quilted lines in all the seams, on some of the motifs in the fabric, and stitched a few diagonal lines for fun. It wasn't too difficult to hand quilt through the fusible batting.

When the quilting was done, I hand stitched a little pocket to the inside of the bag. So darn cute!

You can see my trusty little 1952 Featherweight machine was along and it did a lot of the work for me. But given a preference, I do like to do as much hand stitching as possible.



Here are the two sides of the bag... back and front. 


Many thanks to my friend Debby for organizing this special birthday party and making a lovely lunch for us, to her Mom Dorothy for sewing along while always keeping several steps ahead of us (and making sure we knew she was!) and to our wonderful teacher Deb Beirnes. Look at the pretty dessert she made for us!
So that was my fun birthday project, and in the time it took me to make one bag, both Debby and her Mom made two! That's what happens with hand stitching... you get to enjoy your project longer since it takes twice the time!

What you are hand stitching today? Link up your blog post below and share your slow progress with us.



   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

Bags - part #3

When you are a competent sewing machine user, aka "a sewist", you are often asked to repair things that might otherwise be thrown into the trash. I don't really enjoy repair jobs, but I do want to keep things out the landfill and am willing to do mending as needed.

My Mom has an old cloth bag she got in Missouri and really liked. She used it so much it wore completely out on one side. Can you see how it is open most of the way down the seam?

First I sewed back and forth over the area, joining it together with thread...back and forth, back and forth approximately a million times.

Then I changed sewing machines to use the only zigzag machine I have. I know it's odd that I have so many machines, but only one that has specialty stitches! I just don't use anything but a straight stitch most of the time. I made a patch from a piece of book fabric, sewn double thickness, right sides together around the outside, and turned inside out. I straight stitched around the outside of the patch to secure the placement, and then zigzagged around the outside edge. There are also a few lines of stitching down the middle to further secure the patch.

Mission accomplished!  
The Mark Twain bag is revived for a few more days of service! Mom was happy to have her favourite bag back and to be able to use it once again. I wonder how long the repair will hold up?

Thanks for reading along with the BAGS blog series this week! Tomorrow we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming :)

Bags - part #2

One of the challenges of dealing with plastics is to figure out how to reuse or recycle them. Instead of throwing plastics in the trash, I try to turn plastic packaging into something reusable. I found this tutorial at BarkPost on how to turn a dog food bag into a reusable tote bag. So I took Granddog Max's food bag and gave it a try. 

I followed the steps on the tutorial and was surprised at how easily my Singer 301 stitched through this bag. It was as if my machine didn't even recognize that it wasn't sewing quilting cotton!



The handles were a little tricky to figure out, but it all worked out okay.  
The only drawback is that although I washed the bag twice, it still has a mild smell of dog food. I wouldn't put my groceries in there or any item that might pick up the smell. But to carry the dog's belongings back and forth to Grandma's house, it's perfect!

Overall the frustration factor to make this tote bag was low/manageable. And I was able to make a unique Christmas gift for my daughter, which she appreciated. 

So instead of throwing these food bags in the garbage, I'll continue to make totes from them. And when they wear out or break, they'll eventually go in the recycling bin.

Drop by tomorrow for Bags part #3.

Bags - part #1

Today is the first of a 3 part blog series about B A G S.
My daughter is an aquarist, which means we are treated to regular diatribes about the evils of plastics damaging the oceans. Most humans understand that the oceans are full of our non-biodegradable plastic. It's a worrisome situation that will result in the extinction of some of the ocean creatures which my daughter dearly loves (seriously loves, more than she loves most humans!)

plastic and marine creatures

In order to not contribute to this global problem (and to avoid lectures from my daughter) I have been highly motivated to change my ways and did some research about options. The website "All about bags" is full of interesting research, and discussion of fact vs. myth/fiction if you want to read more yourself. 

Bottled water is a no-brainer. I try to never use this product and carry my reusable water bottle everywhere I go. Two exceptions to this rule are when I am in a dangerous dehydration situation and can't find a fountain or water tap to refill my bottle, or we are camping in an area where the water may be questionable. As much as possible we carry drinking water with us in re-useable containers.
The use of plastic bags has taken me longer to sort out. I carry a bag of old bags in my car and take them with me whenever I go into a store. They go in the recycle trash bin when they break or when I put meat in them from the grocery store. My goal is to never accept a new plastic bag when I am shopping.
However we all need containers of some kind to transport things like groceries. Quilters are notorious for being bag ladies and we have lots of them. I prefer to use cloth bags and recycled plastic bags. Here are two bags that have recently been given to me. The International Quilt Festival bag was a gift from my friend Sandy, and the "Life is better in Canada" bag was a Christmas gift this year - thank you Barbara and Debby for the wonderful bag full of treats!

This is the interesting information on the bottom of the Quilt Festival bag. 
What kinds of bags do you use in your part of the world? Drop by tomorrow for part #2 of the Bags series.

Shop Hop Bag

I haven't had much sewing time this week with the interruption of preparing for and celebrating Canada Day.  Also, all of the rain we have had has resulted in great growth (mostly of weeds!) in my garden.

I did manage to finish this little "Shop Hop" bag I had been wanting to make. I bought the magazine about 2 months ago and just didn't get around to working on it until this week.

The pattern is from this magazine,  which has several neat patterns that I intend to make. The pattern calls for diagonal straight line quilting, but I just had to do some swirly quilting for this fabric!

Look at this cute button for the perfect embellishment!

I attached the bias binding by machine and was reminded of how much I don't like the look of it, but it's okay for a bag.

And here is the inside of the bag with pockets for your

 credit cards. 

The next bag I make is going to have a longer strap because this one is too short to hang comfortably where I would want my bag to hang for easy access to the credit cards when shopping at the quilt store!

Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day everyone!
Prior to 1982, July 1st used to be called Dominion Day. You can read about what it is all about here. For some strange reason my kids were both away today, which meant I didn't need to stand in the sun and watch the parade. So I celebrated Canada Day by...guess what?!?
That's right - Canadian quilting!
I worked on my tote bag from the spring shop hop (you can read about the shop hop here). For those of you like Mare and Paula, I know you can sew these tote bags in your sleep! But for me, having only sewn 2 bags in my entire life, it was hard!
Here I am on the left sewing the handles to the INSIDE of the bag! Nope - that's wrong.
Let's see...how to fix, how to fix?
Cut them off and try again!!!
I kept thinking that no one else complains about how difficult these bags are and Mare is making them by the hundreds! I just kept at it, and finally finished! This is how Paula shows her bags by hanging them on the doorknob. So here is the tote bag, back and front.