Saturday, April 9, 2011

making a round bottom bag with Reese

After seeing his sister get to use my sewing machine (and being attracted to anything mechanical), Reese, asked if he could do a sewing project with me.

When the plastic container which held our wooden blocks broke, it provided me with the perfect sewing project to work on with him...a new bag to contain the blocks. Originally I was going to sew a hobo-style bag until I examined the canvas bag which stores our colored blocks and discovered it had a round bottom. This was a little more daunting as sewing a round bottom would require a greater deal of precision (a skill I'm trying to improve upon...patience in the process is not my strong suit :) ). But I was up for the challenge and here's a pictorial review of the fruits of our labor:


















Since Reese is a hair shy of six, I ended up doing most of the work, but he was able to help with the ironing and liked being able to operate the pedal while I did the stitching on the machine. I tried having him feed the material as well, but his legs are a little on the short side of being able to work that and the pedal. This worked well as a beginner project since it had simple step and enabled me to explain some of the essential parts of the sewing machine and a sewing project.

I used our other block bag as a model and kind of guessed at the steps needed to put it together. If you'd like to make a bag of this type for yourself, here are a couple of  links to round-bottom-bag tutorials (there has got to be a snappier name for these things!). If you end up sewing one, I'd love to see how yours turns out. :)
  • From Cotton & Cloud  (I love t he bag she made!)
  • From ehow (no pictures but the instructions are thorough)

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