A Somewhat Success

Now that the holidays are over I still find myself listening to Christmas music. It puts me in a good mood and reminds me of a few weeks ago when Christmas had yet to come. I know for some the holiday's can be a headache, but it wasn't for me. There were only a few rush-hour holiday shopping trips and even then, I didn't overspend as I tend to do. Plus, we were away on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It was nice to be away with my mini-family. We really enjoyed ourselves.

Anyway, as I said in my last post, I finished up a project over the weekend. Here is a picture of it, taken with my iphone today at my office. I did my best to sharpen it with Picnik, but there's only so much I can do.

As I also mentioned in a previous post, I purchased the pattern for it on Etsy (a pdf file). While the pattern instructions were decent, a few key things were left out, which made for a few small mistakes. At least I put my seam ripper to good use. To be honest, I have a hard time with instructions in general. E can read something and understand it right away. Me, if there aren't pictures for every single step that needs to be done and I can't visualize it on my own, forget it. So, I can't really fault the pattern maker.

Overall, I think it's a decent purse - if you overlook the topstitching. Man, topstitching that sucker was a tough one (even with E's help). I made the mistake of using white thread, which only helped to showcase any stitching mistakes on the black exterior and green interior. Oh, and I also put the magnetic snap too close to the top edge, so I couldn't stitch above it. I found out later I could have tried using my zipper foot - but I haven't used it yet and switching sewing maching feet scares me. Anyway, there you go. My first real purse. Yay! Next time I'm going to try and take more pics as I go along, as part of my New Years resolution, but we'll see.

tic

P.S. My favorite Christmas song is O Holy Night - I downloaded a version of it by Mark Harris on Amazon. It's pretty amazing.

P.S.S. I used Ikea fabric for the outside of the bag.