The finished patchwork bag

I've declared victory on this. It will most likely be used for small project storage: patterns, knitting stuff, that sort of thing.

Because of the buckram retrofit, the lining had to be put in by hand, not a fun thing to do, but it didn't take long. I tacked the corners together too, hiding the knots in the seams.

The lining fabric itself is a leftover piece of something from Dressew. It's much more suited to garments and looks rather sad in a bag; if I had been less cheap or lazy, I'd have either used a heavier satin or cotton, or interfaced it.

 
The bag is meant to have little tabs with grommets instead of these D-rings. But I wanted antique brass, and this was the only thing available that really matched the clips I could find. No great loss since they're easier to do a good job with anyway (although getting them in on top of the stiff ends of the zipper tape was a little tricky, as I recall).

Buckram: putting the 'construction' in 'construction techniques'

So here's that bag again, in the process of being retrofitted with two-ply a.k.a. crown buckram:

What I did was cut the buckram to slightly smaller than the size of each piece without seam allowance,

then tuck it in beneath the seam allowances, open each pair of seam allowances flat, and glue them down to the buckram on each side. The layers of batting and interfacing, not to mention the buckram itself, kept the glue from bleeding through to the outside.

The glue I used is some unidentified fabric glue I got from Kaufland back in Germany. Whatever it is, it's definitely neither Elmer's nor cyanoacrylate, but that's all I can say.

Binder clips make good clamps.

That loop off to the side will become the handle.

Why not sew the buckram in, you might ask? Well, this is very heavy stuff—even if you do trust your machine with it, and have a free arm, it's a real pain to get the right parts of a small project under the needle. Kind of like sewing doll clothes if they were made out of oaktag. And I didn't want any topstitching on this project, either.

I used this stuff because I happened to have lots of it left over from several years ago, back when I was trying my hand at making a few hats. It isn't the easiest thing to deal with and can't be washed, but if you're looking for something 'sculptural', it does the trick.

Many stores don't carry this weight; you can get it online from places like Judith M or Farthingales, to name a couple. The two-ply is two fairly heavy weights of buckram fused together, while others are single-ply and quite a bit softer. It will generally come rolled up in a long box or tube, since there's no non-destructive way to fold it. (Keep that in mind if you're in Canada; a US supplier may try to ship UPS.) I'd have to see how it would compare to something like Timtex, but I have a feeling it's a great deal stiffer than that.

Pieced bag from a German magazine

Here's an issue of (German) CUT magazine I got a couple of years ago...

... the main reason I bought it being this bag pattern.

I got started on it and was quickly reminded that I don't especially enjoy piecing. It's doable—not that I'm perfect at it—but fiddly, too much work for a result that's in most cases ultimately two-dimensional. This bag, at least, obviously isn't in overall structure, although the sides certainly are meant to be flat. (The fabrics were, I believe, discharge-patterned by my aunt-in-law.)

While I did back all the pieces with fusible fleece and then a woven interfacing, that clearly wasn't going to be enough. If I did this over, I think the ideal sort of backing for a lightweight cotton like this would have been fusible fleece backed in turn with the heaviest fusible available, with a generous amount of seam allowance cut away from the latter.

An issue with this style is that the zipper naturally wants to form a nice smooth curve, while the pointed shape of the sides wants to induce a sharper bend right at the center top of the bag. It would probably be a bit less obvious with a much stiffer fabric, which is almost certainly what the pattern intends, at least for the lining—since it's meant to be a toiletry bag, the pattern calls for a coated fabric to be used there, which would add a fair amount of structure.

Being as it may, I retrofitted the whole thing with two-ply crown buckram, which I'll post about next.

Happy 2016

While I don't necessarily understand why we celebrate what seems to be an arbitrary time of year, I have to admit it did prompt me to post something here for once. :D

If this trend continues, here are few topics that might turn up in the near future.

• A pieced bag from a German sewing magazine, and why it's taking me so long.
• A few useful and unusual notions.
• Some knitting, mostly socks.
• A bit of wardrobe organization (mostly because I said I'd do it).
• Some patterns and fitting, vintage and not.
• A new machine, my first computerized one. And maybe a bit of mechanical-machine adjustment stuff.

At any rate, best wishes for 2016!