the silent treatment & a stow-away bag

I’ve been giving my sewing machine the silent treatment. It’s not that Betsy did anything to me. (Yes, I named my sewing machine, and I talk to her too.  They say plants grow better if you name them and talk to them, so I'm hoping that sewing machines work better if you name them and talk to them too.  Hey, you never know.)  Between the pretend and play mail carrier set in May and the pillow buddy in June, the two of us were spending a lot of time together . . . too much time together in fact. We needed some space from one another . . . we needed a break.

But recently, I saw a canvas roll-up bag in a catalogue . . . you know the kind of bag that you can roll-up very small and fit it in your purse for those quick trips to the market.  This was just what I had been looking for.  I'm always forgetting my ugly green bag either at home or in the car.  More than once I've made a quick trip to my car to retrieve a bag while the checker at the market was ringing up my groceries.  These bags caught my eye right away because they were cute, canvas and compact.  I thought, "Hey, I can make that."  So I grabbed a canvas remnant from my overflowing remnant stash and started cutting.  (By the way, I've joined The Train To Crazy crew in the GREAT de-stash challenge, so I can't even buy a single remnant of fabric until I've put a significant dent in the stash I have . . . yikes!)      

Although I didn't have a pattern (And even if I did you know I wouldn't use it because I like to make things harder than they need to be.), I thought I could figure it out on my own pretty easily. 

You can probably see where this is going by now. 

This bag should have taken less than an hour, but apparently, my sewing machine did not appreciate the break as much as I did.  Betsy made my life miserable and drove me to swearing often (no children's sensibilities were damaged in the construction of this bag) for roughly the two hours I spent sewing, ripping, resewing, ripping, rethreading, resewing, ripping, rethreading, resewing . . . I think  you get the picture.  I just couldn't get the stitch right, and I threaded the machine over and over more than a dozen times.  Finally, on the 13th rethreading, wallah . . . stitch perfect.  I swear I did the same thing over and over, so the only thing that I can attribute the problem to is that Betsy was feeling neglected and unhappy.  

We're finally on speaking terms, and I'm hoping that she has forgiven me.  You'll see why tomorrow when I announce my fifth craft till Christmas.

Here's my new bag . . . I'm calling it the stow-away bag since it will be stowing away in my purse until a much-needed moment. 

Rolled up into a nice bundle

Stowing away in my bag.  It actually fits nicely into the bottom of my purse.

Filled with OJ, black beans, green peppers, a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.  Don't worry those things weren't all for the same recipe!

Do you see why I love this bag so much?  I think everyone need one of these little gems stowing away in the bottom of their purse.  What do you think?

Craft on!