Back on the bandwagon

After a two month hiatus thanks to the birth of DD, I’m back on the diaper bag sewing bandwagon.  I was set to go downtown with the two babes last week, so I found it necessary to finish revising and make the Chateau Diaper Bag ™.  I worked on the bag all of last week and a day or two the week before.  Things went remarkably well.  I figured out a way to work around the drama I encountered with the Bungalow Diaper Bag™ using the Peltex.  I worked out almost all of the problems, but, of course, I still ran into trouble.

The biggest problem was that I interfaced most of the lining and one piece of the bag, which turned out to not be a good plan since the lining ended up being a bit bigger than the bag.  Part of the problem was that I didn’t get the seam allowances to be exactly 1/2 inch, and the other part of the problem was the ridiculously thich Peltex.  I discovered this snaffu at 4:30 in the morning, so I was pretty discouraged. I decided to give up and go to bed.  When I came back the next day, I managed to find a solution, so all was not lost. 

Another problem was the fabric for the bag . . .it’s a really nice suede, but it’s slippery and squirrely, so I had a hard time cutting the pieces to the exact measurements which meant some of the bag pieces were slightly smaller or bigger than the lining.    I also managed to miscalculate the amount of brown fabric I had, so I didn’t have enough for the lining and for the bias binding.  I used some store bought binding, but it wasn’t wide enough, so it was really difficult to attach it.  I’m actually going to go back and redo the binding with wider binding, because the narrow binding just won’t work out.

After attaching the binding, I realized that I had sewn the pockets on the front instead of the back.  And then I realized that I attached the flap to the front instead of the back.  So I’ll have to fix the flap when I redo the binding.  The pockets are just stuck being on the front, but I actually think that will be a better design, anyway.  All in all, the bag is functional and I’m pretty happy with it.  Like I said, I need to redo the binding.  I also need to make the straps longer and add more snaps, and I still need to tack the lining to the bag for more stability.

Now I just need to make another Moored Purse™ to the Bungalow Diaper Bag™, and my great diaper bag designing and making adventure will come to a close, 6 months after having begun!