Dimension

I love everything about sewing bags, especially out of felted wool sweaters. The combination of the wool's weight, softness, and drape make it a pleasure to sew. I love how the shape of a sweater (and working around moth holes!) helps determine the ultimate shape of the purse. For example, the shape of a sweater's sleeve when I cut open the seam determined the lovely bell shape of the flower purse (above).





When I started making wool bags last fall, I sewed them by hand and made them simple in shape, flat, and unlined.






But a chance meeting with my designer friend Maya at the local Salvation Army inspired me to start putting the purses together by machine. What a conceptual leap forward that was! Machine-piecing allowed me to create bags with fullness and dimension.

The octopus purse (above, left) came together easily by machine, and the octopus applique emerged from a piece of felt that I had cut for another project and that ended up with eight "legs". The messenger bag (above, right) was based on a pattern in Betz White's Warm Fuzzies book, a perpetual fount of inspiration for me.

Luckily I still have one of the earliest, flat bags I made, the dove purse (above) for my daughter. It's now on my sewing table and is in the process of undergoing a dimensional metamorphasis.

Now it has a bottom (made from quilter's template plastic), and soon it will have an interfacing-reinforced lining for extra structure.

From a design and skills perspective, it helps me to look back to where I started and appreciate the evolution of my bag-making skills. So when I get frustrated and feel that I'm not finishing projects quickly enough or well enough, I can realize that starts and stops and big leaps forward are just part of the creative process.

Bag Evolution

My reusable market bags have achieved a new milestone in their evolution--the ability to stand upright.

I made this "Un-Paper Bag" from a Purl Bee pattern. The outside and lining fabrics are from SewGreen, and the handles are Chocolate Lollipop from Anna Maria Horner.

It's a simple bag, but the pattern involved very precise measuring and cutting. I had to rip all of the stitches out at one point and re-cut the fabrics. The lining fabric is a pretty loose weave, so it gave me the most trouble.

The tricks to getting the bag to stand tall are the heavy-weight interfacing in the lining, a plastic insert in the bottom of the bag, squaring the botton of the bag by adding two seams, and LOTS of ironing.

I'm hoping that this bag will work well for holding egg cartons and wide-bottomed milk cartons, though it looks like it might prefer to hold a bottle of wine, some cheese, a loaf of French bread, and a bunch of big-headed Gerbera daisies. I'm sure my husband wouldn't mind helping me clean up after that photo shoot!