Rainbow Foil Camouflage Bucket Bag

Of all the fabric I ordered from FabricMart in January, the most 100% impulsive choice was a black synthetic knit with a foiled design, bearing multi-color splotches on silver foil, and the foil laid down in camouflage blobs.  And, since it was $1/yard (and I was ordering other things--specifically, more of the apple print--so shipping costs would be distributed), I got silly and ordered ten yards of it.  Yes, as a knit, it's 60" wide.  The quantity of this fabric is mildly overwhelming.

Also, after taking the time to figure out what to do with all of the apple print--for which I had at least the one plan, when I ordered it each time--I did not want to spend a lot of time trying to use up all of this fabric at once.  It would be fine in the stash until inspiration hit.  But.  I still wanted to make at least one thing from it before putting it away.

And, while I honestly probably will make a jacket from a bit of it, eventually, like I did with some of the other foiled knits from the same manufacturer (here and here), I didn't want to do that now.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, my mind settled on making a bucket bag.  I'm not sure if I've ever even owned a bucket bag before, let alone made one.  I definitely don't have a pattern for one, but, after looking at bucket bags for sale, and at blogs showing how to make them, I felt confident enough to start cutting a bunch of rectangles and a few circles and start sewing things together.

 

 I think it turned out OK.

Itai!

 I've wanted to try making an ita bag for a while.  When I finished the patchwork jacket, I decided that my next project would be that bag.

I made a stack of the materials I had that seemed suitable--clear vinyl purpose bought from Joann, some glitter vinyl and several pieces of free-table cloth from the craft thrift store, leftover scraps of the glowworm green lining, bag zippers from Wawak, webbing and hardware salvaged from some baby thing from the kiddo's extreme youth, a stack of thrifted embroidery stabilizer, and a whole lot of Wonder Under and fusible webbing

I knew I didn't want to do a style with a heart-shaped window (I'm not a heart-shape person), and decided to rein myself in and not do anything complicated.  The only odd thing was that the glitter vinyl sheets had been used a bit, so I had to figure out how to work around that.

I absolutely made up every part of this as I went along.

House Purse Renovation

 Well, not a big renovation--I used the grommet press to add spring snaps to the patchwork and appliqué house purse I made in February.

Since these were added after the purse was finished, there's no extra interfacing or other reinforcement inside where the snaps are, but there is some, since I interfaced everything for general body and to withstand the appliqué process.

I really like these snaps, and I am resisting acquiring ALL THE DIES for the grommet press.  I have plenty of things I can make with what I already have.

House Purse

 I saw a post a few weeks ago that had pictures of a few different simple little purses that had appliqué details of windows and doors, so they looked like houses.  They were very cute!  Ans also very uncredited.  I looked for sources, and quickly discovered that most of them had been re-posted without credit for so long that the originals were lost, or at least extremely obscured, but I found enough of them to further discover that making purses like that seemed to have been fairly popular among non-English-language craft bloggers 10-15 years ago. Here's my Tumblr post of the sources I could find, plus a few others.

As with most craft things, spending that much time looking at this craft made me want to try this craft.  I dug into my scrap stash--the same stash I used for the patchwork waist cincher-not-really project, so it's the same pink-blue-green color scheme

And possibly even less planning.

UFO Sighting

 I started this purse in summer of 2019, got to the point of being ready to sew all the sub-assemblies together, then put it into a bag and didn't touch it again until yesterday. Sewing a purse that I do like in the meantime did not encourage me to return to this project with any speed, either.

However, I have been doing a tiny bit of stash organizing (and admitting that a lot of the fabric I'd picked out to donate, then decided to keep and sew through...nah, I really should donate, especially after a burn test showed that one--a nice shirt weight--was a polyester blend, which I would never use.) I decided to finish this purse so I could eliminate the bag it had been stored in, and here we are

It's not great, and it was as infuriating to finish as I expected it to be, and I have no need for another purse, but I still kinda like it?

I guess I'll call this one...FOILed Again. Maybe.

 ...because...y'know...  It's what I did with the sticky leather and adhesive transfer foil experiment I showed a few posts ago. 

 

Sewing Vinyl Is Easy.

I use a leather needle to sew leather, vinyl, pleather, laminated cotton, oilcloth, foiled fabrics, and anything with a similar coating.  A leather needle (in, as with all needles, the appropriate weight) is all you need to use to make sewing any leather-like material work without any unwanted sticking.

Because the problem is not the vinyl sticking to the machine bed or the presser foot or the needle, the problem is that the holes made by a standard needle are so small they don't allow the thread to move how it needs to.  Leather machine needles (and glover's needles for hand sewing) have broad tips that cut tiny slits in the material, which makes enough room for the thread to move freely.  I have been using leather needles for machine sewing leather-like materials with no problem for nearly 20 years and I have never needed to change anything else about my machine.

But.

I am still very bad at designing purses.

See, in an effort to remind myself how easily vinyl sews with the correct needle, I dug through my small pieces storage and came up with some vinyl remnants that have been in the stash for a least ten years each (and are still stable, instead of disintegrating like some early 2000s vinyls have) and then gathered other things that seemed to coordinate with them and ended up with this pile of stuff

which, over the course of a few days, I turned into...this

Don't worry, there are many close ups of the bad design decisions under the cut

Square bag for a square game

Well, Terraria isn't as overwhelmingly square as Minecraft, but...um...

Yeah.

I made another bag.

I can hear the music now (I mean, not just because it's playing on a computer in the next room.)

There are sewing bloggers who make beautiful purses. I am not one of them.

I didn't even realize I was going to make a purse this weekend.  I just stumbled across a set of prints I'd forgotten about wanting to combine and decided I would Do Something with them right away.

The first impulse was to sew a skirt--of course it was.  It always is.  Which means I have...several...mixed print skirts.  So maybe not a skirt this time.

"Y'know," said that voice of ill-conceived impulses, "You haven't made any purses for a while..."  And I hadn't--checking file dates on photos, it was 2011, and it was this one

made during my PIPING I CAN DO PIPING phase.  Also before the whole "Hmm, I might very well be goth, huh" thing.

As with the few purses I'd made before, there had been a lot of planning and measuring and consideration for exactly what things I would be carrying in this purse.

The purse I just finished...not so much.