008 - square boxy bag #2
Used the same tutorial as the previous boxy bag. This is the first thing I've made that kind of really did not come out how I wanted, which I guess is an educational experience to have.
The most notable change to this was using an even smaller length of 7.5", instead of the 9" in my previous attempt and the 13.5" in the tutorial. Straight up - What Was He Thinking. I recall feeling well-motivated when I made this decision but I can't imagine what that motivation would be now. The 9" length of my previous attempt turned out very cute, I guess I just interpreted the length as having an unbounded linear effect on the cuteness of the bag. But with these dimensions, there's not enough material in the planes parallel to the zipper, which makes it bulge out a lot and lose its shape. Plus the zipper is in the shorter dimension when you view it from the top so it just looks like, why would you do that.
Other penitent post-construction thoughts:- The boxed corners were slightly off in a few places, like my previous bag. Partly I am just getting impatient at this point in the process - boxing corners feels like I'm basically done so I rush a little through them to see the finished project. Also, I cut out 1.5" boxes, and I wonder if going smaller on them would have salvaged things a little bit, maybe 1" instead.
- Some other easily avoided errors, like realizing too late that I hasn't moved the zipper before stitching near it, so I got a little bit of a bubble looking thing on the topstitch.
- Beyond the dimensions, the not holding shape maybe could have been mitigated by the optional fusible fleece step on the canvas that I skipped. The last one I made is reasonably structurally strudy, but I realize now that this fabric is listed as midweight canvas (no GSM given), and it definitely feels lighter than the canvas I used last time.
So I felt invincible and got into a mess. Revisiting this a day later, it's really not as bad as I indicated abovem there are positives too: other than that one part, the topstitching is reasonably even and straight, I managed to be a lot faster than my previous boxy bag. Some people like it:
The sashiko pattern canvas on the bottom is from Firecracker, the rest from my mom. Particularly disappointing because (not necessarily communicated via these pictures) we agreed that this green is like the most perfect green we've ever seen and she didn't have much, less than a yard I think. But all else aside, I do think this color & pattern combination kind of goes off.