Abandoned Sewing - Large Bag

Many people I follow on social media buy fabric from the Styled Magnolia. I have not bought any fabric yet, but she also sells patterns. A few months ago the Sabel Tote was released. It had quite a few very nice features.

I find I really enjoy when a pattern has a good video sew along. Sometimes the directions need a read through or three before all the information is absorbed. Having a visual walk through on a difficult pattern is so wonderful. The video on this pattern is great.

The first portion I completed was the handles.

I don't have the sewing lines drawn on the handles for attachment to the bag yet. If I mark the sewing lines now they will have faded by the time I need to follow them to sew onto the bag proper (ask me how I know).

Then I moved onto the gathered pockets. The gathered pockets were one of the design features that caught my eye.

Any excuse to pound in some rivets! The installation went quite well on these.

Inserting the elastic cording and slide toggles also went well thanks to the video. I moved on and began attaching the side pieces and the wheels fell off.

It was then I realized I had attached all the side, middle and end pieces in the wrong order. I took a deep breath and decided to attach the handles.

Luckily they went on without an issue. I then spent some quality time with a seam ripper. Eventually I got all the panels attached in the correct order. The bottom panel was a make it fit affair. Since there had been trimming and seam ripping the fabric was not as lovely and perfectly cut as it had begun on the project.

After all of this I was running out of steam for this project. I was already about 4-5 hours into the project and really had just an outer shell of a bag. Once I sewed the outer pieces together I realized I had sorely miscalculated the size of this beast.

A 15 pound dog and all their toys along with a water bottle and food bowl would fit comfortably in this bag and still have room left over. I really have no use for a bag of this size. I was thinking it would male a nice larger project bag. Well yes if I was knitting a king sized blanket!

After watching the rest of the video and realized the lining would also take another 3-4 hours to complete. Time for a self conversation: do I really need to invest 9+ hours into making a bag that I will not use? Short answer: no. I decided to abandon the project and cut my loses.

I do not expect to sail through every sewing project. I do enjoy sewing projects where I learn a new technique or two. This project was just way more than I bargained for, thank goodness for the video because the pictures in the directions did not have enough contrast for me as a low vision sewer to actually be of much use. If I knew I would get a lot of use from the finished project I would have finished, but I could not see myself ever actually using this piece.

My sewing time is limited and I want to create items I love and will actually wear or use. The use of pictures in pattern directions is great but for the love of all things holy make the pictures large and make sure there is good contrast between the right and wrong side of fabrics. Also do not photograph light fabrics on an all white background. This means for a low vision sewer such as myself there is no contrast. This is the second pattern within a year that has tiny pictures with a very light colored fabric and appears to have no contrast in the outer and liner pieces. If you have older eyes or are a low vision sewer these items make using the pictures pretty much impossible.

I will take some helpful hints from this pattern for my next bag make. Now I am off to plan my new makes.