I’ve finished making a laptop bag out of Oscha’s Hobbit Quest Travel fabric. Even having made a sample bag first, I got surprised, repeatedly, as the following journal entries attest.
TL;DR (for the statistically minded):
Number of times I changed the foot on my machine: 18
Number of times I swapped thread colors: 8
Number of seams ripped out and re-sewn: 8
Number of needles broken: 3
Number of needles bent: 1
Total number of machine needles used: 6
30 May: [Before starting the official bag, I did lots of prep work, including re-cutting most of the pattern pieces since they had been accidentally trimmed down while making the sample.] Follow pattern closely. Pay attention to notes! And pin/clip lots! Go slowly + take breaks.
02 June: I cut up the Oscha fabric so I’m committed. And I followed the instructions for pattern matching exactly instead of fudging it.
03 June: Sewing has begun — and I’m adding pockets to my pockets… [Things were going so smoothly I thought it would all be easy. Silly me.] Pattern-matching is done. I had a scary moment when I thought it wasn’t going to work at all…. I did get the patterns to match… not perfectly… I can live with it.
04 June: The technically challenging part is done. [Or so I thought.] Now all that’s left is construction of the more normal kind… [It wasn’t normal at all. My brilliant idea to use the Timtex I already had instead of buying foam caused problems every step of the way.]
05 June: I did a step out of order… And as I tried to sew the gussets together, I broke needles. Three of them! [I went from enjoying myself to swearing to crying.] In frustration, I finally stopped…. I did a materials test with my topstitch needle and it can go through double everything.
06 June: Switching to the topstitch needle helped but it isn’t the entire solution — because I bent it so badly it started hitting the foot… So many bad choices. Timtex = mistake. 1.5” hardware means less room for sewing [I used 1” hardware for my sample].
07 June: It took an hour to sew [one side of] the binding on by machine… I wish I had gone with my impulse and made the binding wider… I’ve started hand-sewing the binding (after carving lots of excess off the seams) and it’s slow but I’d never get this to work on the machine. [Ten layers to sew through!]
11 to 15 June: [I took a much needed break to go camping.]
16 June: The strap was easy… except for sewing on the slider buckle… But it’s done. The bag is patched. [to cover an exposed under layer, a result of shifting the fabric to make the pattern match] Pressing definitely improved the bag shape … I think it’s time to call it finished.
While I’m pleased with the final results, it will be a while before I sew a bag again.
