Fabric: Vintage Ladies (Ivory) from Ruby Star Rising by Melody Miller (gifted from The Cottage Home)
you know that feeling you get when you are working on a project that you are super excited about, that's taken you forever to get to and that you've chosen very special prints out of your stash for? it's hard for me to use up treasured fabrics. i have issues cutting into prints i adore, it's like i hear my insides screaming "stop, stop, don't do it!". seriously...it takes me forever. so for months now i've been drooling over my friends knitting box bags (from a talented knitter's etsy shop that i hope to feature soon) and every time i see them i think i'm gonna make some of those for myself to help store my knitting. i use turquoise cloth storage bins for my knitting supplies but wanted something pretty to use inside. i thought some gifted cloth bags and these box bags would be the perfect solution. little did i know this project was going to be the good project that goes wrong...lol.
after researching online for a while to find the best tutorial to follow i picked my chosen one that the most people seemed to refer to when making box bags. i'm still not sure what happened to make this bag go wrong, but i think it was mostly the fact that i was very tired (reason why i do not sew tired anymore but i broke my rule) and the kids were running around nutso while i became obsessed with making this silly thing work. even to the point that my sewing machine was an airplane engine and i was the captain and all the chairs they put behind me were seats that they filled with themselves and barbies to go on a holiday to disneyland. i even spoke with an accent...yes, i was that desperate..lol. oh the things a mom will do to get some sewing time in :P
i quickly realized that the bag had taken a turn for the worst. first one i cut out i cut out wrong and messed it up. cried over my wasted fabric. second one i cut out i still think i messed up but i went with it bemoaning to myself about having such a hard time cutting out a bloody rectangle..lol. so once i went to attach the bag to the zipper i realized that my print was going to be upside down one side...duh. too late now...i whined some more because i'm a perfectionist and will forever hate that side of the bag but for some reason i just kept going. big mistake..big mistake. i should have known it was because i had the dimensions of the bag wrong. oops. if i had turned it the prints would have been right going from top to bottom and the bag wouldn't look like a long wine case instead of a box bag. what you say? the pics above don't look wonky? well....look below my dears...look below..lol..
how's that for the world's longest box bag? hahaha, it cracks me up so bad now that i can laugh at it. it's actually not that long but looks longer due to it being so skinny. you want to know what else? when i had almost finished constructing my bag i realized it was about 4 inches too long...yes...it was even longer than shown here..lmao..so i chopped that puppy off. see.....
ouch..that hurt i tell you. but i persevered. the fact that my zipper was awesome and i didn't make any errors with it gave me the energy to keep sewing. that and i loved the prints i used so much i just didn't care at this point. but did the oopsies stop? nope, that bad sewing karma just followed me around that day. bah to you bad sewing karma.
see the mistake on my topstich on the handle above? i know, i could have ripped it out but at this point it was like a trademark for the bag..lol and because the bag dimensions were wrong i had to attach the handle and sew the box corners about 5 times to get the size to work. i quickly realized the dimensions given for the handle were way larger than the space i had allotted on the sides so when i first sewed it up the handle was folded and gibbled. not pretty. i did rip that out...about 4 times...lol...and i had to resew my handle. but in anger i just whacked some of the width off forgetting that i had an enclosed seam so i had to then rip it apart too and resew. gosh darn it all.
but the zipper looks good right? that's all that mattered to me at this point..but then i opened the bag and looked at this.
arghhhhhhhhhh! i hate exposed seams. they drive me batty. i'm a stickler for finished seams. this irritated me and yes, i know people cover them with bias tape etc to cover it up but i had chopped mine all gibbly and couldn't do it. needless to say next time i will be sewing the tutorial i now found that doesn't have exposed seams. i know, i don't know what's wrong with me but i will make myself another one...if just to prove to myself i can not mess it up..lol.
it holds my knitting great, it's easy to carry and store and i really love the fabrics. so i'm still using it and you know what? it brings a smile to my face cause i can just laugh it off.
cause if you don't look at the bad parts it can look pretty cute, no?
ahhhhh, the zipper. and then i realized it was like a metaphor for my house and life right now. i can try to ignore the bad and frustrating parts and focus on the good things that make me happy that are actually harder to do than the rest of it. like that zipper for instance. i used to have a giant sized fear of zippers and now i find them fun. moral of the story...don't give up, even if it's not working. rearrange, try again, persevere cause you never know, you may love it in the end. not everything has to be perfect :)
have you had a good project that's gone wrong lately? c'mon and share with me. what did you do with your project? let's embrace our oopsies today.