A Tote

This is a class I took... although I have to say I was in a class of my own... no one else showed up. It's called Favorite Tote. My only favorite part of it is that it's finished. It's nice and big and would be great for shopping... and I may use it for that. Look at all the room inside of it!

As you can see I used a Mary Englebreit Jelly Roll to make it.Now why I didn't enjoy making it. It has double batting to make it look puffy, which is one of the things that appealed to me. I love puffy. But boy is it hard on a sewing machine, especially when you have to do things like the bottom that had 4 layers of batting and two of fabric.

The grommets look nice but were a pain to put in. And it used 2 1/2" piping for the handles which was hard to pull through and then I had to try to sew them together.

That's when my sewing machine said enough was enough.The needle started to hit the plate and, being electric, was bouncing up and down trying to keep moving. I turned the machine off and tried turning the wheel by hand... it hit metal.I took it all apart, cleaned out around and under the bobbin case and put in a new needle in case the first one had bent.. although it didn't look bent. I turned the wheel by hand again and it seemed fine.

So I started to sew and went through the entire thing again. I may have bent the needle shaft maybe? I dunno, but it's going in tomorrow for a cleaning and to have it looked at. So I sewed the ends together by hand. I also put up my little Janome to use in the meantime but I was so upset and scatterbrained that I don't know what I did with the plastic piece that covers the bobbin. It's got to be around there somewhere... on the floor maybe?

Went into Vancouver again with my daughter later this afternoon for another wedding dress fitting. She was wearing a leather jacket and said she didn't feel too safe in a Hippie neighbourhood wearing it. I told her Hippies were gentle people.. the make love not war right? Some of my best friends used to be Hippies.She informed me that new age Hippies are a cross between Hippies and Yuppies.... so I guess now they're Huppies? I dunno. But it was still light out these days at 7pm so everything was fine except for some weird guy in funny looking hightops (they were like neon yellow and looked plastic) who asked if we smoked. We said no. Daughter said he was probably going to try to sell us a half pack of cigarettes he was carrying. Right, someone is going to buy an opened half pack of cigarettes from some guy looking like that Geesh.

To add to all of this I went in to pick up the blouse I ordered to wear for the wedding. It's HUGE. It's a size 16. I don't know why it didn't trigger that a size 14 should have fit me at the time.. guess I was just disappointed that I couldn't get it buttoned up. It's a Petites store. I guess I thought maybe their sizing is different. Also, because my kidney's are so large (5x normal size) it's not unusual for things to be tight around my stomach.I discovered today when I tried it on that it ties in the back... DUH!

Why wouldn't a sales clerk point that out when the bottom 2 buttons aren't buttoning but the rest seems to fit? And of course now all the stock in the store has changed so they no longer had a size 14. So I'll have to have this one adjusted at some point. It was an expensive blouse. I never buy expensive blouses. But now that I have I'm darn well going to wear it. It's okay for the wedding cause the suit I bought has a short sleeved jacket that will go over it. With it tying in the back at least the rest of it looks like it fits me.