Sewing Kid Totes…Wednesday Windings 06/15/2011
Here’s my favorite way to get over creative burnout or project roadblocks–make pointless things for my kids. After getting totally frustrated with something serious I was sewing, I took a break to try some little tote bags for my kiddos. (Ok, maybe breaking my needle and running out of bobbin thread helped convince me.) The Ladybug has been asking me for a case for her little pocket bible for a while and I’d seen a couple patterns I wanted to try.
The bag is about 6x8.
This post isn’t any kind of tutorial or anything because I didn’t follow any of those patterns and every one of them turned out different (and with different issues!). For the Ladybug’s, I used some leftover Peter Rabbit material I had from making her tooth pillow.
For the Cowboy, of course, we have cowboys.
Is that not the cutest fabric? It's lined with the blue plaid too.
His is bigger and probably turned out the best of the three. I have no idea what he’ll use it for, but I couldn’t make just one when we have three kiddos. I switched to white thread and had trouble, trouble, trouble with my bobbin the whole time. So his turned out looking a little frayed and rough. Since I couldn’t get it to turn out smooth, when I did the handled I just stitched up and down the middle over and over again to hold it and let the edges fray like crazy. You know, if you mess up just pretend you did it on purpose.
It was a hopeless situation, so I tried to make the most of it.
When I switched the bobbin and thread out to orange, my bobbin trouble ended. I think that white one was just not spun tight. No matter how much I changed the tension, it wouldn’t work. As soon as the orange went in, it was smooth sewing again.
Speedracer's is red & orange with spaceships and polka dots.
Speedracer’s has velcro because the opening is a little too big for how shallow it is, and it’s lined with cute orange and yellow polka dots. I was trying to learn to square the corners and it turned out a little more like a purse than a tote bag. But we’re going with it.
Anyway, it got me past my creative block and now I’m back to some bigger projects in the works.
What have you been up to lately?
Nice! I have some Sesame Street material that I’ve beehn thinking of turning into bags for the girls. Now I think I can!!
I’ve been in a paper crafting mode – lots of scrapbook pages and {hopefully} father’s day projects if I can get my act together. I’ve also been knitting a fair amount 🙂
oh, i like it a lot! i sooooo wish to seeeewww! i bought a machine about 5 yrs ago and the same fabric is still jammed up in it- i do everything by hand cause i just can’t get the stupid thing threaded properly!
I struggled with the same thing on my old Kenmore machine! Finally just gave up and the hubby agreed that I could get a new machine and Bessie and I have been humming along since last December! Good luck!