Project No. 8: Project/Picnic Bag—Part 4

[August 22nd, 2007]

Almost ready to begin sewing my new project bag together, it occurred to me my old bag lacked an organized system for carrying knitting needles. I laid my needles on the front panel liner (right side up) and pinned two strips of ribbon (right side up) across the panel (and over the needles), about one-third and two-thirds of the way down. I removed the needles and stitched the ribbon in place, leaving gaps where the needles had been. (I realized later that pinning around the needles was superfluous. The important thing is that the gaps on the top and bottom rows line up with each other).

I pinned the panel fronts and backs to each other, right sides together. This put the applique, the pockets, and the needle holder all on the inside of their respective panels. Repeating the steps I took for the pockets, I sewed a 1/2-inch straight seam around the perimeter of each panel, leaving a gap. I clipped the seams, turned the panels inside out, and pressed. This gave me 5 panels; front, back, sides (2), and bottom. I should have whip-stitched the gaps closed, but was hoping they would catch in the seam when I sewed the panels together to form the final bag.

When sewing with a machine, the thread that shows on the right side of your project comes from the top of the machine by way of the needle. The bottom thread, which comes up from the bobbin, shows on the backside of the finished piece. Up to this point, I had been sewing with different top and bottom threads, blazing my way through my stockpile of leftover spools and bobbins.

I was fortunate to find army green thread in my stash to match the corduroy, which I used to sew the pockets to the liner panels in Part 3. For the needle holder, I made sure pink thread was on top when stitching the ribbon to the panel. It didn't matter that I had pink on top and black on bottom for the rest of the stitching thus far because I had been sewing hidden seams. From this point forward, however, the stitching will show. So I'm off to buy some thread...

Next Week: Shopping for thread and making the bag