A New Weekend Bag

My last post was all about the ExCel fair and I shamelessly showed off my new fabrics. I came down with an almighty cold the day after so apart from a rather limp bit of cross stitch from my sick bed, very little actually got done.

So I was doubly excited by the prospect of FOUR days off over Easter. FOUR! I've worked a 24/7 shift pattern for the last eight and a half years. In that time, I worked nearly every Christmas and/or Boxing Day, every New Year's Eve and at least some of Easter. If I got Good Friday off, I'd be in all weekend and the Monday too; if I was working at the weekend, I'd probably have worked the Monday. Basically, Easter was a non-event for me. But this year is a whole different story. I took Wednesday and Thursday off to write the penultimate essay of my degree, which I sort of did alongside plotting crafty projects for the weekend and googling sewing and rhubarb recipes.

I started my sewing on Friday by trying to make head or tail of the instructions of my weekend bag. They didn't make a whole lot of sense so I powered on regardless.

WARNING: This weekend bag is DEFINITELY not a beginner project - it looks like it is, but it really isn't. Mostly because the sewing instructions make very little sense, the handle length they say to cut is miniscule and there is NOWHERE for the 15cm zip it specifies you get to go. There were also elements of the bag that were a massive clat and didn't really work particularly well.

BUT, I am very pleased with my lovely new Weekend bag. The lining is this super cool Rowan Documents that is basically photos of 1950s travel documents. I think it goes really well with the weathered Atlas face fabric:

 

 

I managed to get the handles to match up underneath, so that's something, and I love these brass O rings I found at U-Handbag.

 

 

 

I even managed to get these heavy duty snaps in all by myself! OK, so there was a lot of banging with the hammer, the dog was so frightened he had to go outside and the Mister kept drawing breath and warning me to "be careful".

 

 

So now I just need to go on holiday. Love this bag!