Skirt Bag

Years ago, I had some wool skirts that didn’t fit me too well, but I liked the fabric so I ripped them up thinking that I would use the fabric someday. That day finally came. I decided I needed a new tote bag since my old one was raggedy and gross, and thought this was a good opportunity to use up that wool fabric.

I had three fabrics from wool skirts to use, a black, a dark gray and a red. I ironed them and measured them to see how much fabric was available to me and sketched out a design for the bag.

I realized that I didn’t have quite enough fabric from my repurposed skirts. So I decided to use some vintage wool fabric my grandmother gave me. The checkered red, gray and cream fabric matched well with my color palette. The one problem was that the fabric had quite a few moth holes, so I had to position my cut outs just right. I barely had enough fabric.

After I had sewn the fabric panels together, I saw that one of the black fabric blocks had a moth hole smack dab in the middle. This was unfortunate as I had already cut the fabric and didn’t have enough to replace the damaged piece. So first I used some thread to sew over the hole, hoping to patch it enough that it wouldn’t expand. Sadly, this looked like a pimple breaking out on a forehead. I didn’t like the way it looked and wanted to cover it up.

So I decided to put a pocket on top of it. Ideally, I wouldn’t have to do this because I wanted the bag to be simple. And quite frankly, I dislike useless pockets. And I’m never using this pocket…for anything. However, it fulfilled its purpose of covering my moth hole. [Sigh.]

The red fabric in the handle wasn’t initially part of my design. However, the black strips of fabric for the handle seemed short to me, and as I didn’t have any more black fabric, I could only use what I had left, which was the red.

When I pinned the straps to the bag, the thickness of the fabric concerned me. I didn’t think my sewing machine would handle it well, so I decided to hand sew it. Unfortunately, my hand sewing skills aren’t very pretty. I used embroidery floss to help cover my poor stitching.

The bag is reversible. At first, I thought I wanted the black and gray side to be on the outside of the bag, but I soon realized that I preferred the red side more. The bag is a bit larger than I anticipated, but it fits everything I need.

Thrifted for $3.72

I bought three sewing patterns for a quarter each. The first is this 1970s dress pattern. I thought the cut of the dress was nice; I liked the shorter dress and thought it would be cute without the lace (the lace just brings it to a girly level that’s just too much for me).

I got this 1980s dress pattern that looks very simple. I like easy-to-sew garments because I’m more likely to actually try to sew them.

And I got this coat pattern from the early 2000s. I got it specifically for the middle coat (as I do not like the oversized collar on the other two coats). I had a specific mission to try to find a very simple straight jacket, and I thought that with a couple of adjustments, I could make this pattern work for me.

I also got three cds for 99 cents each. I bought Oasis’ What’s the Story Morning Glory?, Poe’s Hello and Duran Duran’s Greatest.

Vintage Flight Book

I got this Flight book for $2 because I thought my uncle would like it. I’m not particularly interested in planes, but I do appreciate the layout of this book. It’s a large book and every inch of it is filled with copy and images—it feels very newspaper-like.

Maybe I’m just so used to seeing coffee table books that are filled with giant photos and lots of white-space (which I love), but it’s rather refreshing to see something that looks different.

Things I Didn’t Buy 79

I thought these old tennis rackets were awesome.

I wasn’t entirely sure what this item was for but it looked interesting. I thought it was for cooking since it looks like a pan on a long stick.

I liked this book cover illustration.

I really liked these Japanese wooden nesting boxes.

I considered getting this Star Trek glass because I thought it was amusing—but resisted.