008 - square boxy bag #2
This was a skirt based on the Jill Skirt pattern by ____. I hesitated for a long time about paying $18 for a skirt pattern. Many YouTube videos will try to teach you how to do this but in the end I was too suspicious - the easy ones looked a little too easy, and the dificult ones went through drafting your own pattern; my first pattern should probably not be one I make, and anyway I don't have any of these arcane-looking curved rulers they're using. looked like they were created by a warlock. I don't have access to a warlock. Between the cost of idea and the simpicity of the endeavor I am still not sure that it was a good idea. This was a novel project for me in several respects, which I will detail in First Pattern Since I bought the PDF version my first step was to learn about and utilize the convenient printing options available from my local library. first time spending hours cutting out a pattern, first time cutting big fabric pieces from a pattern, etc.I'm looking at r/sewing frequently enough to know the adages about how sewing is 90% ironing, etc., but even with that prior I was amazed at how time-consuming and unintuitive cutting fabric from a pattern is. I pinned one of the pieces but apparently not enough, so it ended up 2 inches longer (??). My first garment meant my first choice about whether to line it or not. I agonized about this for some reason?
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 (even though that's The Thing You're Supposed To Not Do), 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 sturdy, 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 above, and there are positives too: the topstitching, other than that one part, 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) she and I 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.