D153-54: String Bag - A Modern Trawler Haul

We suddenly have a lot of bath toys for Bub and it occurred to me that I also have a lot of crochet cotton - string bag ahoy!

Not a single fish in that catch!

I used the pattern from Erika Knight's Simple Crochet and it took me a bit under two evenings.  I used a contrast colour on the last row of the handles so they're easy to find and grab.

In hindsight though, I was a bit gung-ho and should've waited till I could get some plastic or nylon kitchen string like the pattern asks.  As it's cotton, I'm not keen on leaving the cotton bag hanging from the bath taps, like I'd prefer, coz it would never dry (especially since our baths has a permanent puddle) and would probably rot*.  Ew.

In the meantime, the bath toys are tidied away with by a project that was totally do-able and quick.  Hurrah!

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*Really, I'll be replacing this because it has rotted.  Who am I kidding.

D72: Brown things

Snipped and finished the brown 1:5 bag, only to find it wasn't even in the edge. Again. VIt's a gift I have. Though I think I was a bit out of it because I forgot to clip the allowances and everything.
So unpicking that and lowering the edge is my next job. Le sigh.

And with nothing indoors and parents visiting tomorrow I made the world's fasted-to-make Chocky cake. Still love it.

D71: Dagnammit

I thought that figuring out this seam allowance caper would align the rest of the bag, like it did for the 1:3 bag.  But it hasn't! IT HAS NOT!

Left: arranged so that the points are aligned.  Right: flat, with no adjusting, points not aligned.

Below is a better pic of the bag with the body of the bag shifted so that the points line up.  It would require the seam on one side to be 1cm deeper at the bag base.  You can see how that would clip off a portion of the left corner, shortening and narrowing that side and making it asymmetrical in the body, just so the tips aren't!

The white line is the seam I would sew to make the points align. It ends 1cm from the original.

I imagine, if I wanted, I could arrange it so that both points have a half cm taken off and it would align the points.  However, at this stage, the only other things I could imagine working are either

1. try folding from the end, rather than using the maths (this effort) or by tilting the ends away from the centre (first effort), or;
2. reverse engineering the whole thing. 

I now officially feel that my attention-to-benefit ratio is way off and that, short of breaking a leg and being desperate for occupancy, I shan't be giving this problem any more attention. SNIPPITY SNIP COMRADES!
:|

D67: Another bag

Not the most perfect stitching by far, but neat enough for today :)

D65: Symmetry ahoy!

Busy day! Have to mention I went to a baby session at a local cinema and saw Great Expectations. Bub is almost 7 months old and I can't believe its taken me this long to go to one of those. It was fanflippingtastic.

In making news, brown floral 1:3 bag sewn up and pressed. Just needs the handle to be made and threaded on, top stitching to attach it all, and a few hand stitches.

Still can't believe how long it took me to cotton on to the seam allowance thing. Hello Australia.

D57: Click click click ding!

That's the sound of my brain working. The ding is new.

That's my thinking over there.

The bag method works because it uses the ratio of the rectangle to make identical full or half triangles that would fit in the rectangle. The seam allowance is fixed and doesn't change with the ratio. That is, it's not a portion of the length or width but a fixed amount. I think this is why the bags turn out crooked.
In short: the seam allowance needs to be accounted for before cutting.

So today, after cutting a 1:5 set for a wallet, I got this thinking done and I'll be snipping those strips to be a slightly smaller 1:5 tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to think clearly about constructing that prototype too. In the meantime, I'm off to Bedfordshire.

D56: Little stashes

Little purse made from 1:3 length.  I meant to cut 1:5 but fudged it. Oh well!

Yesterday's chocolate bikkies. Made 41 :)

D55: Complete gift bag!

On a chair.

I was right! Following on from yesterday's post, I was spot on with my guess about folding the lining opposite ways to make it match the cover shell.


After this success and a bit of pressing, the rest followed pretty much as I'd hoped and in good time.

The lining & covers sewn together.

The bag turned out and pressed. The tips are open and ready...

...for turning out!

The finished product!

Some of the top stitching.

The only concern I have is that the seams are pressed open (inside the bag walls) and the top stitching doesn't strengthen those joints.  At the moment the top stitching only picks up fabric from its own side of the seam.  If I'd pressed the seam allowances to opposite sides - the lining allowances one way and the cover's the other - the top stitching would've reinforced the seam, too, rather than only decorated.  For next time, that one.


At this point in the day I've also begun some little biscuits. They're a chocolate shortbready thing and require chilling twice.   It also lets you whip the butter before adding the other ingredients - way easier than the usual shortbread method. Luckily, it's a cracking day: sun-soften butter ain't too likely in winter.  Right now, the first chilling is going to be taken up with bub and dinner, but it doesn't really matter when the next parts happen. :)  I'm liking this recipe already.

D54: Gift bag

I love giving things I've made.  I especially love it when I get it right in my idea of choice.  I'm very fortunate to have friends and family who show their gratitude proportionate to the effort of a project.  It's so rewarding that I'm sure I give these things for what I receive in return!

Yesterday, my mother-in-law (I shall call her Mil) visited and, as she's one of the sisters I'm planning the bags for, I asked what kind of bag and fabric she'd prefer.  (Luckily she'd already shown a liking for the fabrics I'd bought, not knowing their purpose.)  Unfortunately, or not, she opted for a version of the 1:3, not the wallet idea. After much mulling, I decided to keep it safe and do one the same width as mine.

So today I got the cutting and seams done, but with a hitch.

The bags aren't perfectly symmetrical once sewn up.  I've checked my lengths and widths and they're the right 1:3 ratio.  Folding the points in make the edges lining up exactly and if only folded they are symmetrical.  But the seam wraps the length a little to the side, I suppose because its the start of a wrapped tube and it leans one way.  I feel like I should be able to slide the folded corner down, shortening the seam and something will fix, but brain is no for puzzle thought moment uurrrrr....

See below, the seam points are opposite each other, but the edges have become unmatched by twice the seam allowance.

My perfectly symmetrical asymmetrical bag.

I could clip off those extra margins and make it symmetrical, but it's such a free form bag it doesn't really matter in the finished product.  Maybe if I were creating a pattern I would clip the margin, unpick it and mark the corner point / sewing line and see exactly where this seam lands along the rectangle.

However! That margin does matter for a lined-bag in that the lining needs to be folded using the different corners to the outer-bag.  Otherwise the margins don't match.
This is something I discovered after making both and then nesting them inside each other.   See how outer's extra portion is to the back but the lining's is in the front?  I'm hoping that folding the other set of corners will flip the lining around.  I'm not sure though - my brain isn't up to visualising that right now.

The inner and outer bags, with their extra length pushed to the front and back respectively.

So the lining is unpicked will be resewn tomorrow.  I will try, with the next bag, shifting the seam down so that the bag actually is symmetrical, as I tried to describe above.

If all is well, they'll be sewn together at the edges, turned out, decorative stitching done, handle tube made and points connected.  Yay for Saturdays!

D49: Little Triangle bags

I'm beginning to suspect that paper-based projects will be best for days like these...

I was wondering about the geometry of the triangle bag I made yesterday.  It's the perfect width for a handbag for me, but it's too short to go over the shoulder: the hole is only forearm sized, not shoulder sized.

For at least one of the four sleeps since then, I've drifted off wondering about other construction ideas.  Folding bags from cones, semicircles and triangles so that theres just one or two seams.  I remember flipping the shapes around in my head and feeling fairly confident about the results.  Really, though, my brain doesn't dance with 2D-to-3D conversions, I need a mock-up of some sort, so today I've done up a few ideas with bits of paper.

Three different lengths, folded from the centre outward.
That 1:2 one is actually 5:12.

I thought I'd start with the rectangles and see how far I got.
I wondered if simply lengthening the strip would be enough. I already knew that the construction steps couldn't be the same as 1:3 (as it works in from the ends) and was curious about other arrangements.  Here are three rectangles of different ratios, all folded so that their centre is at the bottom of the bag.

I thought the lower the ratio, the wider the bag. The 1:2 5:12 and 1:4 both have a sort of 'left over' part, which is fair enough as it's just a bit less or more than the neat 1:3. Although a 1:1.5 (or 2:3) ratio bag may be even more shallow, the reverse is not true. As you'll see with the 1:5 examples below, I think fixing the width of the rectangle at 1, for example, determines the width of the bag to always be at least 1.4 (with a bit of give for the bias).

Left: Folded from the centre (symmetrically)   Right: Folded from the end with a triangle

I thought I'd try another 1:4, folding it from one end to create the same shape. This shows how the left over part was shifted entirely to one side, making a kind of envelope.

The symmetrically folded 1:4, in half.

I think this one is totally good to go! A neat little clutch, no?

Here is the 1:5 effort. The one labelled 'wrap' is folded from the end and has the extending end concertina-folded and tucked into the other tip. It would be asymmetrical and possibly sit on a shoulder really well.
The 'centred' one is the same size as the 1:4 clutch when folded in half. It would hold more, though, because the tube/body is deeper.

The one on the left is the same height as the 1:4.  The right one is asymmetrical.

I like this one very much and already have a lined version in mind as a gift.
That's all for today. Possibly more miniature geometric bags in the future.


*Teachers looking for ratio/geometry/prediction tasks are welcome to steal this post! ;)

D48: Triangle bag

I found this a few days ago in my feed via Makezine website. It's an excellently simple bag made from a 1:3 rectangle. It's designer calls it a triangle bag and you can see why. The tutorial I used is at between the lines by Pascale.

My triangle bag!

I wanted something that would fit into a day, but it wasn't as quick as I'd hoped. Fifteen minutes, suggested Pascale.  Hmmm, I thought, is dinner already made...?

Measuring it out.  It's much too long. It should be 45cm, not 46cm!

Firstly, ratio matters.   I used a rolled-hem foot on the machine to hem the beginning rectangle, as the instructions demand, but I didn't properly account for the seam allowance in my original measurements.  I wasn't even sure of what the rolled hem would use.  Luckily, I didn't go into this project feeling precious about the fabric (long-term stash filler).  At least the time saving rolled-hem foot saves time when I make mistakes. O_o

So my first effort was a bit long, and chopping & hemming another edge added time.  I also decided I wanted a scrunchy part at the handle... Anyway, you'll see what I did.

I let it be a bit long, thinking the seam allowance would eat up the extra length but forgot that I'd measured the height accurately.  Silly me!

Using the rolled-hem foot to do the edges.

I really do like using this foot, but I can't use it with everything.  I find it really tricky with sheer, stretch or very light fabrics.  With those, if I want a rolled hem, I pin-sew-pin-sew and sometimes, depending on the fabric, with pin-tack-sew twice instead.

The rectangle hemmed and then folded, when I realised it was really was too long.

At one point I thought of working backwards: finding the middle, folding it 45degrees and then folding back the corners. But I decided no, I will do it p r o p e r l y.  The slow way.

Bye bye extra bit!

The layout and folding of the bag. Only two short seams!

The scrunchy, made up without measuring.

Of course, the bobbin ran out of thread at literally the last inch, so that's why the joining square on the left is a bit ratty. I'd cracked it a bit by that point.

Joining of the two points, then tacking and little half-hitches to secure the scrunchy.

I tacked the scrunchy in the middle and did a few sneaky half-hitches at the end to hold its length in place.

The finished product!

...and holding my phone, keys, sunnies case, wallet & water bottle!

As the comments in the tutorial suggest, there are lots of ways to go with this one.  For future ideas I'm thinking of what could be done while skipping the first hemming step:

• Hemming the edges at the end. 
• Making two bags, one as a lining, and joining with an enclosed seam or bias binding the edges. 
• Using sealed seams and bias binding the edges. 

Meanwhile, I'm quietly pleased with this one and hope that I'll be able to use this as a chuck-in for the pram or some such.  Glee!