Favorite Things Pins & Needles: a Tardis knitting needle case

I got this Tardis fabric at Gala in Victoria. The pattern is pretty much a simple rectangle that folds and rolls up.

I made a zipped closure for the small pocket (at lower right), instead of a Velcro flap, because of what I had on hand. Also, I feel the zipper is unlikely to allow stuff to dump itself out.

 

To keep the needles in, the case just folds up. This isn't the neatest thing ever, since the flap ends up being a bit big and loose relative to the rest.

But it's simple and does the job.

I also made tie ends instead of using the elastic-and-button closure, figuring elastic could wear out and not really wanting to bother choosing a button.

Other things to note about this pattern:

• Directionally patterned fabric (a.k.a. "with nap") can be an issue because the main piece is just folded up to form the pockets and the flap.
• The pattern has you stitch twice through the different pockets. I think it would be difficult to get both stitching lines in the same place, plus it's more work. I only stitched through all layers once, after positioning all the pockets.
• It's probably best for straight needles and maybe DPNs, rather than circulars. Personally, it holds all my straights, and I don't plan on acquiring more. It won't also hold all my DPNs; as there's a chance I may buy more and/or find ones I've misplaced, I've punted on any sort of elegant storage for those, for the time being. But I think the stitching line spacing and/or pocket size might need some reworking if you want this to be mainly a DPN case.

This should be my last quilting-cotton accessory project for a while.

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.

A quick little UFO

So yeah, I've got a backlog of pattern reviews to do, and I haven't been great about starting any new projects that need much planning. On top of that, I've been doing fun things like spending quality time with memtest. Anyway, one thing I did finish recently was this little bag:

I had the main piece all knitted and ready to go, together with the handles, sitting in a drawer for oh, about three years. Two main reasons: a) I thought it should have a lining, but didn't think I had anything suitable on hand; and b) after sewing another similar little bag with rigid handles, I realized I don't especially like using this style of bag. I'd much rather have a shoulder strap, and I find the openings on these things unwieldy, even with fairly generous slits left on either side of the handles.

In the end, I just used muslin for the lining; that matches the handles well enough. It remains to be seen how much use it gets, but hey, at least it's finally done, and I do like how it looks.

The pattern is Patons' Cabled Bag; the yarn is Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Seaspray, used double.

Bag done

The side without the pocket; you can see a bit of the exposed-zipper top closure

The side with the exterior pocket

The one appliquéd side seam that avoids cutting off the owl motifs

In comparison to the original bag from which I took the pattern,

aside from the obvious fabric and trim differences, this one is much more structured, the pocket and zipper placement is reversed, and the handles are shorter — partly intentionally and partly because given the length of fabric I had, I would have had to seam them not once but twice to make them as long. These address three things that annoy me about the original: it can't stand up by itself, but collapses if I put it on the floor, making it harder to grab the handles or reach into it; I prefer to wear it on my opposite side; and the handles tend to flop off my shoulder when worn. On this one the handles are actually a bit too short to conveniently wear with some of my heavier RTW coats, which have (too) deep armholes, not that I think this is really a wintry fabric anyway; still, I'd make slightly longer ones were I to sew another of these.

A little bag progress, and a realization about the topstitching

I've only done a few bits and pieces of sewing lately, but I got the side zipper into the bag, and the pocket bag partly attached.

 

The zipper is sewn into a window in the side of the bag, somewhat like (some ways of making) a welt pocket or bound buttonhole, but since the strap will cover the ends, those do not need to be neatly turned under. To avoid bulk there I just cut vertical slashes.

The zipper is overly long because it was the only way I could get one that would match the top zipper as well as meeting other criteria: the color looks reasonable with this fabric, the coil is fairly wide, and the pull is decorative and will hang down vertically, even with the zipper placed horizontally.

First one edge of the pocket bag is held onto the lower zipper tape by a double row of topstitching. The wrong side — if there is one — of the pocket bag fabric is up. I tacked it on with whipstitching beforehand, since this was sewn through from the right side where I couldn't keep an eye on it. There is no need to remove the basting, if it doesn't go through to the outside.

I suspect this was done with a twin needle in the original, but I'd have no way to be sure without taking it apart. I did two rows with the single needle, which are not as perfect but will have to do. The thread is Gütermann Mara 30; this is a bit beyond the weight my machine will readily sew, and even if I'd had a large enough double needle, my machine doesn't do all that well with those either.

Then I flipped the pocket bag down. I gave it a quick hand understitch too, to really make sure it doesn't ride up into the zipper pull, though this shouldn't be strictly necessary.

Then the other end of the pocket bag is folded up to meet the top edge of the zipper tape, and the topstitching will be repeated there. Again, I will hand baste it first to avoid any nasty surprises. Finally, the attachment of the straps will catch the sides of the pocket bag.

By the way, this pocket bag is cut all in one piece, with the bottom being a fold. It saves some work, if your cutting layout will allow it.

The fact that the pocket bag can be constructed and attached entirely by the topstitching led me to realize how the handles of the original could have been attached and topstitched in one pass, without the stitching being visible on the inside of the bag.

It turns out the lining was not bagged out at all, in the sense of being sewn on with a hole left for turning. So my proposed construction order was not correct. Instead, the handles must have been attached/topstitched with the top edges of the bag sides already turned under, at least where the handles crossed them. The lining and shell were each assembled completely, their top edges turned under, the lining put into the bag, some parts of the bottom seam allowances were sewn together from the inside so that the lining can't be pulled out, and then finally the turned-under top edges were lined up perfectly and edgestitched together. (I can confirm that the topstitching is all that's holding those top edges together, because I can run my fingernail between them.)

I will try to do the same, because it will be much easier than wrestling a bagged lining around my stiffly interfaced fabric. I will probably add a hand-basting step to make things easier for myself.

On the pocket-less side, I got as far as attaching the handles with edgestitching. I will do the same on the pocket side before deciding what further topstitching to do, but I think it will follow the pattern rather than involving a big X shape as on the original.