My heart cushions are now complete!
On the cushion with the treble clef in the middle of the heart, my ladder stitch needs work! I think I stuffed it a little too much so when I came to sew the ladder stitch the edge went all lumpy. The other two cushions are sewn up quite well.
After five weeks the Messenger Bag is coming on really well, and actually starting to look like a proper bag! The only things left to do are the inside lining, binding around the top and to attach the strap.
Here is what it looks like so far…
If you would like to join a sewing class run by Plum’s Stuff check out this link: here
I followed the plan…
I always seem to have a problem with the size of the fabric. When the pieces are cut out they are the same size, but when they are sewn together they change! This wasn’t that much of a problem thankfully!
The vision I had for my new drawstring bag was to sew each section together as I went (outside 1 to inside 1 then the same with 2), then sew the two together. It was a disaster!!
Then I thought it wouldn’t have worked anyway because the four ends of the drawstring sections were all open. The objective was to only have one side open, because that is what went off with the first attempt!
With some more thought… I came to the idea of putting the bag together like I would a tote bag. SO… the first thing is instead of having four separate sides, have two sides double width and fold it in half when I come to sew it together. The second thing is to have the top outside section larger than the inside section and fold it over and sew around the top edge.
One of the things I have to be really spot on with are the measurements to make sure that both sides (apart from the one top section) are exactly the same size… that’s the plan anyhow!
I was looking for things to make and I came across this sewing blog: Threading My Way and a tutorial for a drawstring bag.
I had a go at making the bag…
The main difficulty I had was when I attached the lining to the main bag around the drawstring section (blue rose fabric). For some reason the two sections together don’t match up correctly at the drawstring openings.
What is different from the tutorial are the dimensions that I’ve used for my bag, they are: (cut 2 of each) 4″ x 10″ top, 2″ x 10″ drawstring section, 8″ x 10″ bottom, 14″ x 10″ lining (measurements in inches).
Following on from the post “New hearts”, this is the first new heart cushion I have finished… it’s filled with hollowfibre filling and I’ve used the ladder stitch to close the gap. It’s not shown on this image but for the back I used a different shade of blue – fat quarter, cut to the size (slightly bigger) of 12″ by 13″ (inches).
