Overdue Thanks, Part 2

I don't know why I was all hush-hush on the first Overdue Thanks post...the chances of any of the five ladies for whom I'm making things stopping in here are just slightly higher than the chances of President Bush dropping by the house to say hello. So, anyway, here's the first of the Thank-You gifts; it's Loes Hinse's Weekender Bag, slightly modified. I added two pockets...one on the outside (that's a fused-on initial) just by putting a lined layer between the handles, and a second on the inside by simply omitting the edgestitching along the top edge of the zippered pocket. I also stiffened the bottom a bit with some double-sided Peltex. I haven't put the button on yet; I'm making a total of four of these bags and I thought I'd just sit down and sew all four buttons on at once.

This is a cool bag...it's my first attempt at bag making and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. I'm not crazy about sewing bulky fabric...but this upholstery fabric wasn't so bad, about the same as jeans-weight denim. Actually, the biggest problem I had is that the fabric had been coated with some sort of stiffener on the backside that made it rather sticky to work with. I have one more bag to make out of this fabric; the other two are out of a textured blue and white stripe, which is a little lumpy and may give me more trouble. But Loes was pretty careful to minimize seam intersections and such to cut down on the bulk as much as possible, which helped considerably.

I may even make one for me one of these days...