The Button Jar Method
First of all, hello to anyone who’s here from U-Handblog – it’s so nice of Lisa to post about my ‘progress’, although in the last couple of days, it’s been hampered by having other work to do.
However daunting the whole bag might be, it gets easier if you break it into little tasks. I have one of those family diaries, with five blocks for each day, and I try to write some small task into each block, like ‘sew handles’ or ‘blog entry’. That way if I tick them off I’ll have made a bit of progress, instead of being overwhelmed because I don’t have six solid hours to sew in.
My next sophia bag task was ‘cut interfacing’. There’s a lot of cutting going on with this bag but interfacing is something you can’t ignore. I don’t have much time today so I turned to my trusty friend the button jar to help me.
I hate pinning and unpinning, and I figure that for interfacing it doesn’t much matter how precise your cutting is. Either you trim the excess, or any wobbles are inside the seams. Hopefully. Unless you wobble a lot. So much swifter to cut four top pieces on the fold this way, once again using the cut bottom edge of one piece as the top of the next.
The next task would be to ‘cut fleece’, and having a quick read through of the instructions I found that you’re meant to have a sandwich that goes ‘exterior fabric, interfacing, fusible fleece’. End. But my fleece is fusible on both sides, so I guess my next task more properly reads ‘cut fleece and more interfacing’, unless I want to fuse the whole thing to my ironing board. I could buy some single sided I suppose but I want to make use of what I have and not shop for the sake of it*.
*This is a lie. I love to shop for the sake of it, but it’s just been Christmas and the credit card must. stay. inside. the purse.
Hopefully your projects are proceeding faster than mine. Any and all time-saving tips are very gratefully received…
I think the best thing about cutting mats is that you can dispense with pins quite often and just use a button jar or similar item. It’s great to follow your project from start to finish in your blog – I’ll be interested to see how the fusible fleece goes. I’ve been meaning to try some in my bags but haven’t got round to it so far.
From: Helen on 10 January 2008, 18:53 #Thanks for showing us your progress for this bag. I recently used double sided fusible interfacing and just put a normal white paper on the side I didn’t want to fuse while ironing although the instruction recommended using a non-stcik pressing or applique sheet or baking parchment paper but I didn’t have any of those and the normal paper seemed to work.
From: Lova on 10 January 2008, 19:42 #Oh dear…if I was feeling very wicked I’d say: Jo, my lovely! Have you not noticed that the button jar appears to be holding something more than just buttons?…your credit card can stay firmly in your purse and you can still have your single sided fusible fleece!
But as I am not feeling wicked I won’t say that…and shall instead just say that I think your post-christmas thrifting is admirable, particularly when it means cutting even more interfacing…but then you do get to use that lovely mat! x
From: Florence on 10 January 2008, 20:40 #I have just made my first bag that is ment to have fusible fleece, having never heard of this I used some interlining and bonder-web! But your way of cutting on a board with a rotary cutter must be so much quicker than pinning and using scissors.
From: two hippos on 11 January 2008, 09:50 #Having a little diary with 5 blocks a day is a great idea. I’ve been getting overwhelmed with everything I should be doing and all the options of things that I want to do, that very little seems to get done in the end. I’ll have to try to break things like you do and then I can feel like I’ve achieved something rather than worrying about everything I didn’t do…..
I’m really enjoying watching the progess of your bag too!
From: melanie on 16 January 2008, 05:47 #
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Thanks for stopping by my blog. When someone is expecting, a whole bunch of women get together to celebrate. We had lunch, played a few games, had cake and “showered” the mommy-to-be with presents she’ll need when the baby arrives. It certainly helps with the cost of things! Have a great day!
From: Carla on 10 January 2008, 15:49 #