I Made a Thing

Some people procrastinate by crafting instead of cleaning. I’ve been procrastinating by cleaning* instead of crafting. The reason for that is complicated and can be blamed on the time of year, sadness, a lack of focus, the influx of my MIL’s sewing supplies, and an avalanche of scraps needing to be dealt with, but the upshot was that I have been moving a lot of things around and not actually making anything. That needed to change, so yesterday morning, I pulled out the Kit Supply Tote pattern from Aneela Hoey. She just released this a few weeks ago. It looked like a quick, easy make. I went stash shopping and came up with this combination:

The exterior is an old Cotton + Steel print; I was waffling between that and some Robert Kaufman Essex Linen, but in the end, I decided I wanted a print, not a solid. The black and white print is from Joann Fabrics. Honestly, I ought to buy a bolt of that in every color they sell because it’s such a useful print. I think that was my last remnant of it. I wanted the pink polka dot for a pop of color on the inside slip pockets. I also thought I was being clever because I had that pink 12” zipper in my supply, but it is not a separating zipper. Arrgggh.

[Zippers are my nemesis. Finding the correct zipper for a project is like hunting unicorns. If it’s the right length, it’s the wrong color. If it’s the right color, it doesn’t separate. If it separates, it’s plastic, not metal, or vice-versa. I have three—count ‘em, three—plastic bins full of zippers because I am so tired of projects coming to a screaming halt because I have to stop and order a specialty zipper. I really appreciate the designers who either carry the zippers for their projects in their online stores or, at the very least, give supplier information in the body of the pattern.]

This is a quick make for a bag, although I found myself scratching my head a couple of times. Hoey uses the abbreviations RSO and WSO for “right side out” and “wrong side out.” I am far more used to the abbreviations RST and WST for “right sides together” and “wrong sides together,” so when I saw RSO and WSO, I had to stop and think hard about what I was doing. I’m not sure if that’s a British convention with which I am unfamiliar or if it’s something unique to her pattern writing.

And that spawned a lively discussion over dinner. The husband wanted to know why fabric had a “right” and a “wrong” side instead of a “front” side and a “back” side. We spent 15 minutes going back and forth and I couldn’t come up with a better reason than “It’s always been called that,” which is a lousy explanation but the only one I have. I did sometimes use “public” and “private” side when discussing knitting.

Back to the bag . . . I loved the fact that Hoey included specific, smaller cutting measurements for the interfacing and fusible fleece that accounted for keeping them out of the seams to reduce bulk. The majority of designers specify to cut the interfacing/fleece the same size as the fabric and it’s up to the sewist to remember to remove the excess before fusing. Do I remember? No.

The whole project came together fairly quickly:

However, as I was doing the topstitching on my industrial Necchi, which is in my office with the overhead LED lighting, I discovered that the 12” separating zipper I ended up using was actually navy blue, not black, but then I realized that the dark accent on the exterior fabric was also navy blue, not black. (Note to self: You need better lighting upstairs.) The inside print should have been navy blue as well, not black and white, but finished is better than perfect:

I cut a piece of heavy template plastic to size and inserted it into the base for some extra reinforcement before hand-sewing the opening closed.

I still need to sew on the handles. I think this is a very useful tote design, though, and will be great for hauling around my embroidery projects. I made the small size; the larger size uses a 14” zipper and Hoey notes that with longer webbing handles, the larger size makes a nice over-the-shoulder bag.

***********************************************************

About that cleaning thing . . . I went to the east coast and visited houses that looked like models out of a magazine—not festooned with dirt, dog hair, and straw—and felt like a failure of a housekeeper when I came home. Yesterday morning, as he was getting ready to leave to go work on a job, the husband asked me to wash his fluorescent yellow hoodie (one of two that he rotates) while he was gone. He took the gloves out of the pocket and turned it upside down to zip it up before putting it in the washer, and a whole bunch of dirt, concrete, and rocks rained down onto the laundry room floor. I am not a bad housekeeper. I just have three times the amount of dirt to contend with as people who have office jobs and don’t raise livestock.

It is what it is and I am not complaining; I simply need to be a bit kinder to myself about the state of my house. I refuse to expend the amount of time and energy it would require to make it look like something out of a magazine and that is okay, although it does need a good spring cleaning every year.