Ready for a complete non sequitur post? Too bad.
So I bought a sewing machine a few months ago. Thus far, I've hemmed pants, made a lot of balls of thread and a couple other little things. I forget what else.
My mother bought this bag. Can you guess where? A tough one, I know.
It's a nice big bag that can hold lots of stuff. The base is 14 1/2" wide, to give you scale. If I'd been thinking, I'd have taken the picture with something in it to help give scale but I didn't. And I'm too lazy to get a ruler out and retake it. I'm nothing if not a dedicated blogger. hah.
The trouble with this bag, the reason why it hasn't been used in the 2 years since it was purchased, well, one of the reasons anyway, is there are no pockets in it. It's just one big bag. And if you try to use it, everything just gets lost because it's just a black hole. Because it's black. And everything disappears into it. Get it? Aren't I hilarious? Aren't you glad you are still reading this blog?
So like I was saying, I made an organizer for it. Yay.
So here are some pics. I just
noticed the string hanging off of it. I'll trim it but I am again too
lazy to retake the picture. And the price tag on the sketch book. And the random junk in the background. At least I wiped down and took off most of the other junk on the counter. Maybe I should start a new blog, the half
ass blog. Seems appropriate.
It's made out of mostly bubble wrap. Everything that looks white in
the pictures is ironed down bubble wrap. You can google it to get real
instructions and an actually well written interesting blog if you
actually want to do it.
I put a divider in it so you have a section for tall things like a thermos or water bottle and a section for papers, books, computer or whatever other random crap you want to carry.
To do it, there is an outer layer and an inner layer. Each layer is made into the bag shape and then put together and the top is folded down and top stitched. I think it's fairly standard process for making a bag. Again, there is this wonderful thing called google that can give you real instructions and less snarkiness.
The pockets are polyurethane. It's a really tough, stretchy, clear film. The pockets along the top on the outside are about 4" deep and divided into a bunch of different size sections for all the random crap that can be shoved in them. There are also big ones on the inside for
more random crap things like power cords. The side pockets are
we'll call it pleated for larger thicker items; in my mother's case it will be for her glasses in a big thick case. I have no clue where you would get polyurethane if you want it. The wonders of working in plastics is you can take home scrap and
turn your house into a horrible hoarder stash have supplies for all sorts of crafts.
I meant to sew the side pockets into the seams but I forgot about them
when I was putting it together. I ended up top stitching it because I
wasn't going to rip the seams and redo them.
I did the stitching in black to make it easier to see where all the pockets are. I'm not sure that is actually working because once it's in the bag, it's pretty dark and you can't see much but I tried. Also, the black thread was already set up on my sewing machine. But I found a good story to tell so we'll go with that.
This is actually the 2nd version I've done. The first version was too tall. And a bit too wide. The stitching quality was close although I could argue this one is a little better. And I added a bunch more pockets.
Yay I actually wrote a post. Still no guarantees that I'll hit publish....
