Cecilia’s Diary

Last night, we left off designing the bag.  The process didn’t take all that long, but in the making of the bag lots of things had to be changed.  If I were to do it again, I would do a few things significantly differently.  First, I made the main body of the bag in one piece and sewed the bottom on in two pieces to make sure that the bottom seams would be enclosed and that both the inside and outside would be pretty.   Here’s the bag after the first piece of the bottom – I put interfacing all over this bag so that it would hold its shape EVERYWHERE.

I like how the bottom turned out in the long run, but the second half of that bottom took a REALLY long time.  Next time I decide to do a bag like this, I’m going to make two panels for the big sides and one thin strip for the bottom and ends.  Perhaps even continuing that strip up to be the longer strap.

Now, I’m going to back up a bit and tell you about the main panels.  Since it needed to be pretty inside and out, I didn’t want a bunch of seams showing on the outside OR the inside.  What to do?  Well, since I planned to cut it twice as tall as I wanted it and just fold over, I put on the decoration and pockets before folding.  Then everything got put together over the course of a few curse-filled days (stinkin’ bottom, never doing it that way again!) and the final stuff started falling into place as well.

For the final touches:

The S on one panel (not really a final touch, but worth talking about nonetheless) is some awesome scale print fabric we found.  I gathered it on both sides to provide the shaping, then one side was sewn to the panel.  A small strip of rolled up fleece was put inside the snake to keep it fluffy, then the other side was sewn down.  Two yellow beads made the eyes!

The same fabric got used as the hanging flap to keep the bag closed when on the move (it got eyes too), a long shoulder strap and two short straps.  The long strap can be folded down into the bag and fits along the ends and bottom to hide out of the way when not in use.

At this point, I thought I was done.  Looking over the bag, however, I found a mysterious seam I apparently forgot to close up.  As I was trying to figure out what I had done “wrong” and exploring the non-sewn seam, I realized that it was an accident that was going to be great fun to exploit rather than fix.  As it happened, that little spot was the perfect place for a wand pocket (or long straight needles, if they’re small enough) so I set out to make a wand to fit the pocket.  I found myself some neat instructions, put the wand together (and thanked my lucky stars I have so much “junk” around the house, because I found silver leaf wax rub that I’d use “someday”) and let it dry before putting it in the bag.

I had the bag.  I had the yarn.  I had the stitch markers.  What about the pattern???  Well, I wasn’t sure what kind of patterns I was supposed to find, so I did a lot of searching online.  I found one pattern that would work for the kind of yarn I got Penelope, but it seemed a little… well, less than inspiring.  I went ahead and printed it off to send, and left my options open.  Then, as fate would have it, I was looking up other patterns for myself one day and saw a pattern… THE pattern.  It’s not perfect for the yarn I got Penelope, but it IS PERFECT for a Slytherin!!!  I laughed with glee and set about printing it off too!

All that was left was putting the kit together!  You can see finished kit pictures here.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey as much as I did.  I can’t wait for next term, and I can’t even begin to explain how excited I am that Penelope likes her kit!!!