I loved watching the latest series of The Great British Sewing Bee (and the first series for that matter), and enjoyed the alteration challenges where the contestants were asked to make something new out of an item or items that the judges provided. Now I've had several pairs of old jeans languishing in my stash for a while (they are now too big - hoorah!), and have been dithering for ages about getting round to doing something with them. So this week I finally got my act together, and fueled by anger after a frustrating phone call, I hacked them to pieces! Very therapeutic actually, and at least I managed to control myself enough to hack them sensibly, taking off all the thick seams and giving myself largish pieces of fabric to work with.
Seeing as I had different coloured denims I decided to have a go at a bit of patchwork, and then work it into a big tote bag. So the legs of the jeans got cut into squares, and then I laid out a design of 3 x3 squares for the front and back of the bag, and another square's width for the sides. Now, I'm sure you already know, but cut denim frays aaaaaalllll over the place - I've spent days covered in little blue flecks. So the bag was definitely going to need a lining - enter old cotton pillow case.
Pieces cut and layout decided, out came the sewing machine. I use my Mum's late-1960's Singer which unfortunately is getting a bit temperamental in its old age and it took me a while and several scraps to get the thread tension right, and then when I'd sewed all the denim squares together and went to sew the lining, I had to change the needle and re-jig the tension all over again. Oh well, a bit of a pain, but I'd rather not kill the machine just yet!
I was really happy with how well (if I do say so myself) I managed to get the corners matched up for the patchwork, but it looked a bit plain, so I added some contrast topstitching in bright orange (my favourite colour) to liven it up a bit. Lining and outer ready to go, I whipped up a pair of handles from more of the denim - with more topstitching - and then I was ready for final construction.
I got in a bit of a muddle here trying to remember which order and which way round the pieces needed to go to make sure it was right when I turned it all through, but luckily I remembered there is a similar bag project in the first Sewing Bee book so I was able to check - don't want to end up with an inside-out bag after all that work!
The other thing I decided to add was a cardboard panel to go in the base of the bag to stiffen it, so I slipped that in before sewing up the gap in the lining.
A final flourish of more orange topstitching (are you sensing a theme here...) around the top of the bag and it's done! What do you think? I'm really pleased as it's the first thing I've sewed in absolutely ages, and it's a great size for fitting all my stuff in when I go to my local knitting group, I can't wait to show them that I can do other things than just knitting!
Obviously now I'm thinking about things I could have done better, but then I suppose that's part of the process of learning. If I make another similar bag at some point I'd like to try putting in a zipped internal pocket, so I must keep an eye out for patterns with the instructions for doing this - anybody know of any good ones?
Well the sewing machine survived the ordeal, so I'm raring to go with making more things now, keep an eye out for my version of Tilly's Brigitte scarf to join in the #LoveAtFirstStitch book launch party next week!
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