{"id":2557,"date":"2011-08-02T11:30:13","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T18:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/?p=2557"},"modified":"2015-03-05T17:53:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-06T01:53:49","slug":"amateur-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/?p=2557","title":{"rendered":"Amateur Hour…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This one’s personal:<\/em> Last week I was getting ready to visit my family and wanted to take a present to my lovely mother-in-law. I found a pattern for a simple, reversible bag and decided to make a practice bag or two before using the fabric I’d been saving for her. Each bag was made from two pieces of fabric, each piece was almost 1\/2 yard x 42″.<\/p>\n

The directions are simple when you know the tricks… but, I had to learn every trick the hard way. I kicked myself several times for being such an amateur.<\/p>\n

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Over the course of two afternoons I made 8 different bags (there’s just a smidge of the 8th one on the left side of the picture above). While making them I made almost as many mistakes. On two I miss-read the directions for seaming the bottom corners, so those ones don’t stand flat. On two others I forgot to leave an opening in a side seam so the bag could be turned right side out. That problem was solved two different ways – once I seam-ripped an opening, once I put the opening in the bottom seam.\u00c2\u00a0 On one bag I sewed the bottom seam without re-orienting the bag; I fixed that by cutting the seam off and re-sewing it. My favorite mistake resulted in:<\/p>\n

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I forgot to cut the “handle” along the fold of the fabric, and solved that by cutting the pieces and re-arranging them, so this bag has both fabrics on both sides… (The bag is actually the same size and shape as the others, though the picture looks different.)<\/p>\n

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Somewhere in there I made the originally planned bag – with birds on one side and geranium leaves on the other\u00c2\u00a0 (my mother-in-law is both a birder and a gardener).<\/p>\n

As far as I know her bag has none of the “mistakes” the other bags did — but here’s the thing — All<\/em> the bags turned out nicely, and all the people I gave them to liked them. I learned lots from making them, but I learned even more<\/em> from making and fixing my\u00c2\u00a0 mistakes without worrying about them. Each bag ended up looking perfect, with seams and boo boos sealed up inside. I hadn’t planned to make so many bags, or to give them all away, but have now done so joyfully.<\/p>\n

Several times I accused myself of being an amateur\u00c2\u00a0 — but then remembered that the term “amateur” has nothing to do with perfection — it means “one who is a lover of”. I had a blast working on this non-quilt project, and it turned out well.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no mistake there!<\/p>\n

Back soon, Heather!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This one’s personal: Last week I was getting ready to visit my family and wanted to take a present to my lovely mother-in-law. I found a pattern for a simple, reversible bag and decided to make a practice bag or two before using the fabric I’d been saving for her. Each bag was made from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19,9,13,18],"class_list":["post-2557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gifts-for-family-friends","tag-creative-solutions","tag-easy-to-sew","tag-gift-ideas","tag-show-and-tell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2557"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2584,"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2557\/revisions\/2584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newpieces.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}