Sewing: The Sound of Music Project Bag

I've been hanging on every word of the creative, resourceful people in my life who take things that are past their usefulness and turn them into lovely bits of everyday goodness.

• My mother, Bonnie, is one of those people; she salvages all sorts of fantastical stuff that others would write off as "junk" and turns it into gorgeous, wearable art for her business, The FamiLee Jewels
• My friend Patty, owner of The Plaid Cupcake, is another artist, making pretty, whimsical, fun items to sweeten your everyday life.
• I recently reread Make Do and Mend: Keeping Family and Home Afloat on War Rations, and have been poring over some new craft books that I received for Christmas: Heather Ross' Weekend Sewing and Amanda Soule's Handmade Home, dreaming of ways to spruce up the home that Corrin and I are building together.

Tonight, I decided to take the tiniest, baby step of sewing something pretty for myself -- a new project bag for my knitting. The project was born of equal parts desire-to-create and I-dropped-my-only-project-bag-in-the-snow-and-need-something-to-carry-my-knitting-in-necessity -- necessity as the mother of invention and all that. I'm pleased as punch with the result:

"The Sound of Music" Project Bag

I pulled remnants from my barely-in-existence scrap bag: a bit of courderoy in a blue paisley print leftover from a gift I made for my Nana several Christmases ago, and a healthy yard of woven cotton that I cut off of a pair of curtains purchased for my bathroom last spring.  Without too much effort I trimmed the pieces into a pair of rectangles (approximately 12"x15"), double hemmed the top and stitched the front and back together along three sides.  With a bit of extra ingenuity, I cut away the triple-thickness 1" hem from the curtain remnants, chopped up and restitched together the hem bits to fashion a pair of handles, and neatly stitched them onto the miniature tote bag with lots of reinforcement.

Without a pattern, and without much work besides some aggressive pressing and repeated pinning of corners, I havea  cute little bag just large enough to hold the sweater I'm working on for myself and the fingerless mitts I'm making for my Mom. I can't wait to carry it around with me on my travels next week!

I'm calling it The Sound of Music Project Bag, since like the play clothes that Maria made for the Von Trapp children, it's pieced together from old curtains.

First published at expetesso.com