All's well that ends better

Hot Patterns 1080



A number of you asked about the ending of the last post and I did elaborate in comments, but if you missed the end of the story, it went like this: I told the woman my name, watched her face fall as she joined the dots and smirked to myself as she made a hasty exit. Obviously the episode unnerved me, but not overly, because actually her actions set in motion a series of events that lead me to the man I eventually married. So all is well that ends better.

Which is what can also be said of this bag. It's taken me forever to make it. If you'll forgive the pun, the instructions on this Hot Pattern left me real cold. I nearly ditched it half way through it was not coming together in a way I was liking, but I was using more of the leather from Nick's and I'd hate for Skippy to have died in vain. (There is something about sewing leather that brings you so much closer to its origins than say, just buying a leather handbag; it also makes it impossible to throw a bad project out.)

In fact, the perfectionist in me sat down and wrote 2 pages of edits to send to the designer, but all I'll probably end up doing is sending them an email that says, "did you ever get anyone to trial these instructions?"

At any rate, I totally love the bag, as I am huge fan of Vivienne Westwood.

The original:



The Hot Patterns' hommage:





Shall we now have a good look at what they did right? I love the internal pockets, the shape and style of the bag, and its size. It's handy it can be hand carried or over the shoulder. I love that they used the cool parts of the original bag - the shaped handle pieces, and the corner protectors.

Really useful internal pockets:



On the other hand, the handles are awkward and would be much better rotated on D-rings. This construction technique doesn't work so well on such a light bag where the cording is not well supported, and the handles are so big.

The weight of these handles really pulls the front out and they sit awkwardly when the bag is put down:



Also they have you bind the inside with bias tape rather than attach a separate lining. Much harder, much messier. Avoid if possible. Those are my big gripes, but I have lots of smaller ones too - cough cough 2 pages worth, to be precise.

For those of you who have sewed the Amy Butler Weekender bag, it is a much harder bag to sew than that, and frankly it needn't have been. That's the sad part, I could be making more Hot Patterns stylish bags, but I'm too scared to, if this bag is anything to go by.

This bag is my first foray into Spring/Summer sewing, gingham and beige say warmer weather to me. They also say "boring" so I have to find a way to spice this bag up a little. When I first showed this to my husband, he said, "oh it's lovely, it's about time you got yourself your own toilet bag."