In my little town we are right now, getting a morning summer rain. So lovely! It tends to get a bit dry here in summer, but we know that the rains will come by October and continue to March, so the weather soon averages itself out.
I could not leave the change purse as it was in my last post! Even though I rushed through the making of it, I learned the process needed to make one so, back I went to Craft Passions tutorial for the Zip-itself change purse and made another one.
First, I decided that I needed to do this completely by hand sewing. Last time, I used my sewing machine, and creating the curves is practically impossible on a machine -- you just cannot hold and see the placement properly. So with hand stitches I accomplished a reasonably good first turn. Do you think? I also used a zipper in better condition, still a previously used zipper but not so grungy as the first.
And again, taking my time and properly following the tutorial, I used a back stitch, not so pretty on the inside, but it does securely hold the "ribbon" (see my version of ribbon explaination at the end ). The tutorial give the option of putting a lining inside and explains how to do that, but since it is on the inside, I don't think it really needs to be lined. But I will think on it and being female, you never know, I could change my mind!
The last part of the tutorial was about "balance" and I sort of skipped over it on my first try, and as a result, my change purse did not have the proper tetrahedron shape, which of course made it lop sided and definately detracted from its "cute factor"
So here I have my properly done version of the zip-itself change purse.
A couple of things I learned and slightly adjusted from the tutorial. I did not use ribbon, because I have ACRES of fabric scraps. In order to create a "ribbon" I cut a strip of fabric and sewed it into a long tube, thus, no raw edge to unravel or frazzle. The thing I would change about the fabric "tube" is that I think for the next, (yes, I will try another, to achieve one even closer to perfection) I will make the "tube" cut on the bias. If the tube is on the bias, it might make it easier to work it around those tight curves required on the change purse. I cut the strip 2 1/4 inches wide and I think it ends up making a tube closer to an inch than the necessary 3/4 of an inch. So a narrower tube, say cut 1 7/8 wide would be better. I started out, sewing with a regular thread (and I should have know this) hand quilting thread is a much better choice. It does not tangle nor does it snag on the zipper teeth so easily as regular thread. If you have no quilting thread, try running the thread through some beeswax. If you don't have beeswax -- just go out and get a spool of quilting thread, it will make your life easier in all your hand sewing!
So, ultimately, this turned into quite a challenge for me and a lesson re-learned. Why do we have to be reminded over and over about certain things in life? Most everything one does, does not benefit by hurrying through it! That is my own little lesson for today.
To make this change purse by being patient and slowly sewing it by hand and with careful stitches, it turned into something that I can show off as a success and will find useful to keep those bits of change in an easy to find place. It took me about an hour and a half to make the change purse, which in the scheme of this is not so long, is it? What else to do on a rainy summer day?
Thanks for visiting!
