Mud Pies and Moonbeams: Finished with the Blue Jean Bag

The last several days have been pretty crazy. I haven't had too much time to work on the blue jean bag.

After a night of absolutely no sleep, I heard that my sister was sent to the hospital to be induced into labor. She was still a week away from her due date. I live 3 hours from her and even further from the hospital. There was no way I could get up there. Instead of working outside on the garage with Dave, which is what I needed to be doing, I sat inside by the phone waiting on phone call reports. I needed a project I had to think about but not too strenously so I returned to the blue jean bag.

I had left off with the all the outside denim sown together and the lining ready, or so I thought. I had stopped because I could not decide what kind of handles I wanted to use or make.

I finally decided to continue on with the theme of deconstructed denim and use thick cotton piping material covered in denim strips as handles. I left the seams exposed along the piping and clipped them just like the body of bag.

Originally, I had wanted the body of the bag to be rather stiff and stand upright especially because the lining is so thin. I did buy some heavy interfacing and placed that in between the bag and the lining. The lining and the interfacing were both too big to fit nicely inside the bag. I don't

really know how many times I stitched and clipped seams before I got the interfacing and lining to fit inside the bag. I do know that I was ready to throw the whole mess away and consider it a learning process, but then I would not have anything to work on while waiting on any news. So I continued, and continued, and maybe cursed a few times, rolled my eyes, held my forehead, and continued. Finally, I got both layers to fit satisfactorily (okay I kind of just got over it).

I hurriedly clipped the remaining exposed seams and washed the bag for the first time. Excitedly I opened the washer after the first cycle and found my mistake. With all the drama of the day I had not paided enough attention to was I was doing and had not managed to stitch into the interfacing. It was all crumpled up in between the lining and the bag! Expected a miracle, I went ahead and placed the bag in the drier. I kept checking the progress - apparently because I am stubborn and excitable that way. Alas, I did not have the miracle I had hoped I would get. The interfacing was still wadded up between the layers.

Finally I resolved myself to the fact the interfacing was going to have to come out. Luckily, I clipped a small 2.5 inch opening and was able to gently pull the interfacing out. I restitched the resulting hole and decided for a second washing.

Late last night while I was waiting on the second drying of my denim bag, I received the call I had been waiting on. My new niece had been born and she and my sister were both doing well. While I was on the phone with my mom getting the news, my drier when off. I went into the laundry room and reached in to take out the project I had been laboring on all day.