Yesterday my friend and I had another day of sewing after the success of our last get together. Another sausage and egg bap for late breakfast and then we sewed until dinnertime.

My friend has a really handy bag which she uses all the time, it was made by a Swedish acquaintance. She asked for the hand-drawn pattern so we could make one. The instructions seemed a little scant, but then when you’ve made 75 bags for a recent event you probably can’t even list the steps, you sew on auto pilot. I was a little fuzzy though, because I hadn’t ever seen the actual bag and my (dozy?) friend forgot to bring hers as a finished sample!

I have to tell you that:

a) it took us about 8 hours of sewing time

b) we were very hungry by dinnertime

c) I suddenly had a light bulb moment 10 minutes before we finished when I realised what the template instructions meant when they said ‘on the fold’. I apologise if by some magic the ear burning sensation was felt by the pattern writer  something along the lines of  “the instructions are a little poor as they were written by someone for whom English is an additional language.”  It really highlighted that anything I ever learnt at school about dress making and reading patterns has vanished into my brain of custard. Also that buying a sewing instruction book is pointless without actually reading the book – the knowledge and skills do not seep into your consciousness

d) next time we’re sure we could make these bags in 4 hours, or much less, as we literally doubled the amount of sewing by having double the quantity of pieces

e) at the end of the day we modelled the bags with an onion in each. It had been a long day by this point…

f) I refused to let my friend take her onion home as I was thinking of the spiced parsnip, ginger & apple soup I’m going to make

g) next time she can have all the onions she wants

Click on a photo if you want to view a larger size. Please don’t judge me on the straightness of my seams.

Mine needs ironing and the gappy part where you put your hand/scissors/moans and sighs (when it came to sorting out the handles) in to pull the whole thing the right way needs to be hand-sewn. That’s going to be the easy part – I will enjoy giving it many admiring looks as it’s the first bag I’ve ever sewn.

Onion anyone?