I was hoping to get this gift made over my holiday break from work, but I just did a lot of reading and resting. I needed that, but now I am stressing on getting projects done that I have volunteered to do.
This is what I need to finish up this week:
- Sample sewing some fabric, plus nice pictures with it.
- Test a men’s t-shirt pattern. I have two to make for the boy, with some HTV cut out for them. Nice pictures of them are needed, too.
- Start sewing the bags for a charity auction – I’m hoping to donate two. I would like to do a bead strip in one, so that means I need to do some loom beading for it. That takes awhile to do.
In the meantime, I was able to get one thing off the list, which is this birthday present for my sister. Her birthday is Thursday this week, but I know she doesn’t look at my blog. I am going to get this in the mail, so she gets it by then.
This is made from an oiled cowhide and the blue is a lambskin. I am hoping the oiled cowhide doesn’t discolor the blue too much.
I tried to make this smaller than my regular bag size, but I should have gone smaller still. It is still a good sized bag.
The inside is brown and gold, with a zippered pocket.
It has a snap closure, where I put a concho on the backside of the snap. There is a conversion kit that Tandy sells. It is basically a small screw that takes the place of the back of the concho, which fits in the middle of the snap.
The interior has 3 different types of interfacing (foam, peltex and regular interfacing), and it also has gold metal bag feet on the bottom. This took me around 6 hours to make. I had to do some hand-stitching around the top, since it was too thick for my sewing machine at the corners.
Making leather bags can be a bit frustrating, with the bulk and skipping stitches. Now, I only have two more bags I need to get done, PLUS I need a new black bag for myself. My old black bag was made from faux leather and it ripped at the handle. It’s been like that for months, but I haven’t sat down to make a new one. There’s always something else that needs to get made, so I want to make sure I get that made in next month. Or so.
No rest for the weary!
