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Saturday, January 23, 2016

... And It Even F'in Zips!

This one. I'm super excited about this one!

So I've been putting off crafts for a hot minute. Not really for any reason other than after some sort of hiatus from crafting I'm always worried that I'll get back into it ending with a massive fail and I'll be shamed out of crafting for another hiatus. So naturally, I got wine involved and all fears quickly dissolved.

To Pinterest I went. I felt like sewing, so I thought this one was the perfect one to do. Can't be too hard to follow step-by-step video directions, right? (Spoiler alert: that was a true statement.)

First thing I did was get all my crap together.
Yeah - turns out I wasn't joking about the wine. I never joke about wine.

You'll notice I bought a fat quarter for this project. I used less than one piece of fabric for this, so when the lady in the video says this is a "scrap" project, she is not kidding. I actually bought a piece of fabric that I was in love with, and then decided I wanted it to be two toned so went out and bought the fat quarter for "accent pieces". My mistake here was that I didn't do it in the same run, so when I got home and put it all together...
Yeah, none of them matched my chosen fabric. So two fabrics from the fat quarter it was. Good thing I only bought one zipper. That was dark blue.

First thing I did was cut out all the strips and ironed them flat. You read that right: I ironed. To be super clear, I drunk ironed them. It's like serious ironing, but with less precision.

So I took the big piece and ironed on the fusible liner. The lady in the video says to use "fusible fleece". Turns out, I suck at finding fusible fleece, so I bought the first thing that I saw that was iron-on and called it a day. I'm really good at shopping, guys.
So I laid the big piece down, and the thinner thick strip on top of it. Then the thinnest strip on top of that and sewed it all down, per her instructions.
Then I squared it all up (this took a while - how do you get a straight line when literally all four sides are crooked?!), ironed everything flat, top-stitched like there was no tomorrow, and then cut the strip into two equal parts.
Next came the most stressful part of the ordeal: cutting the zipper. I had a ton of fabric; zippers I had one of. Luckily, I nailed it.
The way that this lady has you put zippers in is genius. I totally didn't even need my zipper foot! And, turns out, I couldn't figure out how to move my needle over either, but it worked out fine with the needle right in the middle.
I did mess up quite a few times. My top-stitching is not exactly on fleek. It's actually very crooked, despite my best efforts. I also ended up top stitching the zipper down twice because I didn't quite catch the edge of the zipper fabric the first time around. Or the second.

Once it was all stitched up, I flipped it inside out and VOILA. A bag.

AND IT EVEN F'IN ZIPS!

I see a lot of these in my future. Although it didn't take me 20 minutes as in the video, it was legitimately quick and easy in the grand scheme of things.

Seriously though... I can't believe it actually zips.