duffle bag class

I feel like shouting it from the rooftops, "I made a duffle bag". That's how happy I am with it. Woot!

The last two Saturday afternoons were spent at The Workroom with Karyn, five other crafty gals and Guy Latulippe (our instructor). The first part of the class was spent tracing and cutting our pattern pieces. I've taken a couple of sewing classes at The Workroom but this was the first time I was introduced to webbing and the bias. Nifty little things both of them are. Getting into the class, my outer lining shrunk a bit when I gave it some steam to get the kinks out and so it didn't fit my lining piece any longer (note: stretchy denim not so good for this project). My homework that night was to re-cut and sew my lining and figure out how to attach it to the bias. Guy was kind enough to email me back with photos on how to do this so that I was able to catch up with the class. Thanks again, Guy!

The second part of the class was when the fun started. Although you do have to pay attention to what you're doing, I just had blind faith that the cut pieces were all going to come together in one awesome way or another. It's such torture to see the lining, threads everywhere, sewn bits etc. in such a mess and your would-be-bag inside out.

Near the end of the class, I realized that hand-sewing was going to be involved. Hand-sewing is pretty much my sewing nightmare. I sew crooked lines on the sewing machine and I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to do much better without it. The class went over time and so I had to baste the entire bag, securing the pieces, before machine-sewing it at home. Turns out, the whip stitch wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. That and  no one was going to see it so, crooked was a-okay. Please don't look too closely or for too long at my bag or else you'll notice the cornered curves are actually horrendous.

But all in all, my bag turned out pretty darn well for a non-sewer. This is in large part thanks to Guy and his clever pattern, his patience with all of my questions and his chipper encouragement. The duffle bag class was a challenging one for me. I'm still quite the beginner and this pattern tested my edge-stitching prowess. I've got to keep practicing and with that, I'm onto my next duffle bag.

Thank you, Karyn for hosting another bad-ass sewing class!

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