Making a Gingham Bag #3 - 18 January 2025

Unpicking and having to change the broken needle were the main issues with this project. I followed all the steps set out in the instructions of the pattern. I needed to add extra steps because I included polyester wadding sandwiched between the main gingham fabric and the lining to add extra padding for this 'tablet bag'.

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The photos above show how I tried to fix the wadding to the lining so it didn’t move by sewing it close to the edge. I managed to sew it about 2mm from the edge but it didn’t catch all the time. In hindsight I should have cut the wadding a bit bigger to make the sewing easier and then I should have just trimmed it. You can see what it looked like below:

Only one of the lining sides had a pocket. In hindsight I should have added another pocket onto the other side as pockets are always useful.

Sadly I had to undo the sewing of the zipper tabs because the zipper was too long to fit in correctly. Unpicking was tough as I used black thread but I managed it.

I used many pins to secure the zipper to the curved bag edge first, and then using red thread I tacked by hand.

Sadly I got too close to the zipper and broke the needle. Luckily it remained attached to the thread (indicated by the dark yellow arrow) but I had to find another one and change my plan.

The photo above shows you what happened. You can see the (messy) red tacking line at around half a centimetre from the edge. The yellow arrow shows the old line of stitching at 1cm from the edge, while the lilac arrow shows the new line of stitching at around half a cm from the edge after changing the needle.

I’m still not sure why it’s not the same distance though but that solved the problem that broke the needle.

The next issue to contend with was the wild wadding. I think our wadding was a bit too thick; it will surely protect the tablet but it was a bit hard to sew. The machine coped very well with this stage though.

_{I was half pleased when I finished the bag. It looked fine : a bit amateurish but functional.}

This is what really annoyed me : the joint between the padded bag and the strap looked bad. The strap looks too thin and weak in relation to the bag. In the video I showed you here a couple of bows are placed exactly in that place; perhaps that placement is strategic, but the thick wadding we’ve used actually exacerbated the joint.

I decided to unpick the bottom of the bag to reach where the joint is. You can see that point in the photo below :

My plan is to reduce the bulk of the seams a bit to reduce the padding there. Most importantly I’ve decided to change the strap by adding a little padding to it. I'm still not sure how much to add because this would make sewing everything together quite difficult as there would be three layers of padding.

All in all this bag was a prototype : a first of its kind. I'd never made a proper bag before. Despite that I want it to be used so I still need to fix the strap.

Thank you for reading !