30 Bags in 30 Days - Final

For the last week or so, I have been looking forward to taking this picture. The one with all the bags from the last month. Of course it is only 30ish bags because I gave a few away. I really liked doing this, it was good to force myself to sew every day and I am definitely back on the sewing wagon (although I need a couple of days off to clean up my sewing area and think about what to sew next). Of course now I can finally move on to posting some other stuff that we have been working on during the last month.

30 Bags in 30 Days - Days Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine and Thirty

This is the last post for the 30 bags challenge. I did it, although I don't have a picture of bag Twenty-Nine, but I can't put off writing this post any longer. For Bag Twenty-Eight, I made an extra-large tote out of a green plaid tablecloth...

For Bag Twenty-Nine, I made a reusable grocery bag with an appliqued flower (no picture, but maybe I will edit this post later). . . and here it is . . .

And finally, leading up to the last bag, I have been trying to figure out what I should make since I wanted it to make one bag to end all bags, I couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to do, and then, it turned out that my niece and nephew (who are 5 and 8) were staying with us for Day 30, so I figured I wouldn't get any bag done, much less a spectacular bag. But then, on Day 30, we woke up and the kids started asking about my sewing machine and I showed them how it works. My niece grabbed a bunch of small scraps of fabric and designed a bag that I sewed together for her and, tada! Bag 30.

And for fairness and sibling equity, here is a picture of my nephew with his new pillow, "Pilly."

30 Bags in 30 Days - Days Twenty-Six and Twenty-Seven

For Bag Twenty-Six, I made another envelope clutch, this time out of a manatee fabric. No zipper in this one, instead, I used a button-hole closure.




Since I have been a bit behind, I knew that for Bag Twenty-Seven I needed to make yet another small zip purse. The bag is nothing spectacular, but I tried yet another new method of installing the zipper, and . . . nailed it! It came out great without great big lumps on the sides, so I am really glad that I made this bag since so many of my bags have zippers and I really like the new technique. I will try and take pictures of the zipper installation next time (I had no idea it was going to turn out so well) and post a tutorial.

I am off to work on a more (hopefully more interesting) bags for the last few days of the challenge.

30 Bags in 30 Days - Days Twenty-Four and Twenty-Five

For Bag Twenty-Four, I made another messenger bag, this time with gear appliques. Although I thought the bag took a long time to make (I worked on it over a few days), the time to make it was nothing compared to the time it has taken me to get a half-way decent picture of it. This bag has sat through three different photo shoots and I still can't find a good picture. I think the dark-ish color of the fabric is throwing it off. Anyway, two photos, one of the bag and a close-up of the detail. The gears are appliqued on with a metallic thread (which was not nearly as difficult to work with as I had always imagined it would be).

 

On an unrelated note, my cat was recently exposed to toxic gamma rays and has now developed super-speed. Because she is so fast, you can only see a blur in the upper-left hand corner of the above picture.

For Bag Twenty-Five, I made an armband cozee for my MP3 player. This was mostly because when I woke up on Day Twenty-Five, I wanted to clean my house and all my clothing items with good pockets for holding the damn thing were in the wash.

30 Bags in 30 Days - Days Twenty-One, Twenty-Two and Twenty-Three

I have fallen really behind in the blogging, but I am having a hard time getting good pictures.
My flash is washing out all the pictures and it has been too dark out lately to take any good pics with no flash. Anyway, for Bag Twenty-One, I remade the wallet from Day Seven. It came out much better this time (a bit bigger all around and definitely less interfacing. The secondary fabric (which you can't see from the outside) is a darling light blue with brown dots.

The other day I got coffee at my favorite coffee stand and the woman who owns the place is just so great that I decided to make her a bag. Once I got home, I remembered that I had this coffee shop print
fabric (of course, she might be totally over coffee decorations, since she probably has lots of coffee related stuff), but like everyone else who likely thinks her main interest in life is coffee and therefore drowns her in coffee gifts, I will give her this zip purse.

For Bag Twenty-Three, I had purchased a small amount of this brown cotton with a funky lime, turquoise and yellow print that I knew would go well with all of the other lime and turquoise fabric and bits that I have at home. I decided I wanted to use some bobble fringe I had to make this bag, but it took me almost a week to figure out where it was. As my husband said, this bag is "um, very festive."

Also, yesterday I was at Goodwill (replacing the stuff I donated) when I found this awesome old projection screen on a tripod. I am not sure what I will use it for, but I couldn't resist. So as you can see in the picture above (which barely shows the bag and mostly focuses on my new toy), I am currently trying to use it for taking pictures (except the background is reflective which complicates things).