Sewing on and Serging forward

A few weeks ago I made my first foray into the world of making a lined Tote bag. I had some good quality medium weight cotton and some heavyweight poly/cotton material, both in shades of blue so I dived in. I wanted something a little more complicated to make than the Morsbag , so I turned to my copy of Merchant and Mills: Sewing Book  (which I highly recommend) for inspiration/a pattern. I went for their Tote Bag, which is a little more complex to make than your average "YouTube Tote Bag", having a 2" gusset, is fully lined and has a pocket. I stuck pretty rigidly to the pattern for the bag and lining, but omitted the inside pocket and made my own cloth straps from the outer fabric rather than add leather straps. The bag took a couple  of hours to make. I am very pleased with the results, so much so that I made a second on a few days ago, this one has webbing strap handles. This is a great large shopper and I am sure I will be making more in the future. Me...

A quick project that I did today was to make a Hussif which I found in the projects section of the Merchant & Mill "Sewing Book". A Hussif is a sewing roll of tools and thread inspired by the rolls that WW1 soldiers used to maintain their uniforms. My version, which is almost identical to the pattern in the "Sewing Book", holds a pair of small scissors, a tape measure, pack of Household needles, seam ripper, two pots of pins and two spools of heavy duty thread. The Hussif is not only a roll to store and protect the equipment, it also has a built-in pin cushion. As the Merchant and Mills pattern may be copyright, I have not included it here. I just need to find a couple of Tic-Tac boxes to hold the pins instead if the childproof "pill pots" which are a safe but a little on the chubby side.

I seemed to be constantly busy during the last two weeks of April. I just seem to have been trying out new sewing projects, one after another. It began with making a tailor's ham, which then progressed to making a sleeve roll, then 10 rice filled pyramid pattern weights and a drawstring bag to keep the weights in. The ham was made on my Singer 99K, the sleeve roll. pattern weights and bag on my Singer 201K. Diane wanted me to make her a tool roll for some of her jewellery making tools. As I had recently taken apart an old leather skirt to re-used the leather, this seemed like a fitting project to make on my Singer 99K (using a leather needle). The roll was lined with felt that we got at the Gloucester Resource Centre. The most tricky project over the past couple of weeks was without a doubt the Office Party Bag from Debbie Shore. I chose to make this from some vinyl which I obtained through the Gloucester Resource Centre some weeks ago. As my first bag proje...

The tools for the job, just add my Singer 99 sewing machine  Diane broke her sunglasses a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday she bought a new pair (in the hope of a summer some time this year.) Her new glasses have no case, so she asked me to make one for her from my pile leather scraps. I have a fair bit of automotive upholstery leather bits and pieces that I picked up at The Gloucester Resource Center's Scrapstore a few weeks back. Leather needles and a Teflon foot that I ordered for my machine arrived earlier in the week. (I used the standard Singer straight stitch foot for this project). I don't have much of an excuse not to make a case for Diane's sunglasses and put my old Singer 99 machine (and me) to a new test. I was not going to try anything fancy for this project, just a plain slipcase with a flap, simply sewn together. No gluing involved. First I had to carefully iron out a few kinks and creases in the leather using a medium/hot dry iron and brown paper to avo...