Chaletgirl

Sooo, it’s only a year or so since I bought some fabric at the 2007 Sydney Quilt Fair to make myself a bag. (Actually you can see the fabric I used for Mum’s new tote bag in the same photo on that post).

At least now it’s finished and ready to use. Fabric is Skipping Girl in Chocolate, on Dots in Chocolate, both hand screen-printed by Sprout Design here in Australia.

I love it.

I just couldn’t wait to show you this….

It’s the nappy bag work-in-progress. I’m waiting for the lining to come by mail. How pretty is that fabric? I am loving this bag very much. Thanks for the advice.

I met up with some lovely Sydney bloggers again yesterday. On a weird, warm, windy, winter’s morning, it was lovely to have good crafty chat. I saw Claudine’s gorgeous Mail Sack which I NEED to make now, begged (a little rudely, mind you) Suzy for a tutorial for a stroller cushion, and admired Belinda’s gorgeous range of goods she is making for the show. All in all, it didn’t do much for my mental to-do list, which has had a few things added overnight!

I was the lucky recipient of Suzy’s lovely gift in the lucky dip, but given that it is dark here and before dawn, I’ll take photos and share later.

For my contribution to the swap, on Wednesday I decided to open up my copy of Bend-the-Rules Sewing and see what I could make to take along. I have had this book for a while, but this was the first time I had attempted to make something from it.

When I found a project titled “Simple Tote”, I decided to give it a go. I have my old favourite, the Lotta Jansdotter tote pattern from Simple Sewing, which I adore. I have made so many of these tote bags because I know how often I use mine, and I want to share the tote bag love! But, I reasoned, there is always room for something new, and so I started with my Bend-The-Rules Sewing project: the Simple Tote.

I surprised to find a crucial error in the directions for cutting fabric – the handle pieces should be 3″ wide, not 13″ wide. And I was surprised by the size of the pieces in general, given that I thought I was making a tote bag. However, I persisted.

I was stumped at Step 1, though, that seemed to show the particular fabric piece in, er, ‘portrait’ mode, rather than the ‘landscape’ mode I realised it had to be. And then it became apparent that the diagrams were of very little help to me at all.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I finished the “Simple Tote” to discover that it makes a child-sized bag that would be lucky – lucky, I tell you – to fit a paperback novel in it.

I wondered – was the Simple Tote beyond me? Where did I go wrong?

So I hopped over to Google and discovered a Bend-the-Rules Sewing group on Flickr, which looks like an excellent resource for fans of the book. There, you can find details of errata (since corrected in later editions of the book) and lots of tips and answers to questions. And lots of photos of finished projects. It is clear from the discussions in Flickr that, yes, the Simple Tote is child-sized, although this is never mentioned in the book, and I must say, it is clear from the many discussions there, that it is not all that simple.

I think that I get what the author, Amy Karol, was attempting to do. There are plenty of rules you can break when you sew. But, you really need to know the rules first before you start breaking them. And although the cover of this book notes that it is “Great for Beginners”, I would whole-heartedly advise beginners to steer clear of, at the very least, the Simple Tote.

I can’t say that I am inspired to start another of the projects. I am a particular type of crafter who, if I am going to follow a pattern, likes it to be very clear - the diagrams helpful and accurate measurements (including within the diagrams) to be provided. If I want to confuse the hell out of myself, fumble, and find my own way; then I am very clever at doing that all by myself, without a pattern.

I think I will stick to the pictures in the book, which happen to be very pretty, and will most likely inspire me to just go my own way.

It was, however, very sweet to see a certain little person adopt the bag immediately yesterday, and put it to good use. All’s well that ends well!