Karen

I only have car trips planned for the year, no flights to exotic destinations, but here I am making things I could take with me to Hawaii or Palm Springs.

I wanted to keep using up those scraps of upholstery fabric. I also wanted to re-create the fun of working with a new material and following a good pattern, like the toiletry bag last week. Well, I worked with a new material (cork!) but I didn’t love the pattern (the Flip Clutch Wallet by Spencer Ogg).

I think part of the difficulty was that the pattern is designed for fabrics that will hold a press, and cork and outdoor fabric just won’t. I think the other issue is just the drafting–the credit card pockets and lining were the exact same size as the outer, and I know better by now and should have trimmed them down by an eighth of an inch.

I need to add a wrist strap but I do think this will be a useful clutch/wallet for going out to dinner or replacing a purse when you want to travel light. The pockets are wonderful–a slip in one for your phone and a zippered one for anything you need to secure.

Writing this up, I realize it’s my first really involved bag project in years, with magnetic snaps and continuous coil zippers and cork to boot. I SUPPOSE there’s a possibility that my struggles weren’t entirely the fault of the pattern….

I’ve been thinking about sewing travel gear for a while now; when I found this pattern on Saturday night, I had to add clear vinyl and some zippers to my JoAnn list and start it on Sunday afternoon. I finished it up Monday and I’m just tickled with it.

I’ve made complicated things before–curtains, quilts, entire coats–but the sense of accomplishment I got from this is equal to or greater than those projects. Maybe because I don’t usually sew bags? Maybe because…there’s a zip down pocket in clear vinyl you can put your makeup in?!

The pattern is the “All In One Box Pouch” by new-to-me Aneela Hoey and it was so easy to follow. I don’t love how bag patterns just give you dimensions, not actual pattern pieces to cut out, but everything here fit together really well. The only hard part was getting the zipper tape to curve evenly around the edges of the vinyl pocket but that just was fiddly, not impossible.

I used leftover outdoor fabric from my slipcover project last year and lined it in some silicon-backed ripstop I had on hand from various hiking jacket projects, so it’s all waterproof. Instead of fusible fleece interfacing as recommended, I sewed in some foam stabilizer I’d bought back in January and wow, that makes for a professional finish.

I guess I need to make that carry-on bag now and then I’ll have a whole travel set I made. Next step: actually traveling somewhere.