Pillowcase bags, grrr
11 December 2023 05:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI wasted nearly six hours (instead of the advertised fifteen minutes) trying to get the pillowcase 'handibag' pattern to work -- the instructions for Step 4 are thoroughly unclear. Which three sides do you sew round? How does the loose 'flap' stay loose, and how does it tuck in afterwards?
Answer: it doesn't stay loose -- if it does, it isn't nearly long enough to tuck in -- and it isn't a flap. It is sewn in along the edges to form a 'hood' that is turned inside out and pulled down to hide most of the reverse side of the fabric. (The basic problem is that instead of sewing wrong-side to wrong-side as would be normal procedure, you have to sew the pocket onto the inside of the bag where it won't show, and thus when it gets inverted this inside section ends up on the outside of the pocket! What the picture at the end doesn't illustrate is that you end up with about 1/3 of the back of the reversed pocket actually being the inside-out main bag showing, whatever you do.)
Fortunately in my case the inside and outside of the fabric are not all that different, so it's just a faded version of the main print.
You are supposed to fold the pocket strip unevenly, right sides together, until it forms a square, then sew round the three bottom edges of this square with the shorter end on the inside in order to trap down the sides of this shorter half, leaving the top fold (and the floating lower edge of the shorter half) free. You now have a patch pocket where the upper two-thirds of the patch is double fabric right-sides together and the bottom third is only a single thickness.
When you stuff the rest of the bag into this square pocket you will end up with the reverse side showing all over, save for a thin slice of the right side fabric visible underneath the doubled section of the pocket patch. You can now turn this doubled section inside out to reveal the right side of the fabric and pull it down over the open end of the bag as a hood (not quite what I had visualised from 'flap the little flap over', and hence not what I was trying to achieve...)
The first time I did this (having already unpicked the whole thing once, after leaving the bottom open and sewing the fold to the top edge of the bag so that it could be stuffed up into this upside-down pocket-- unfortunately if you do that the smart little right-sides-out pocket bag thus created isn't nearly large enough, because the pattern sizing relies on creating a patch pocket using the reverse side of the bag itself to form the back of the pocket, rather than inserting a separate pocket bag) I automatically sewed the pocket on right sides together, which meant I ended up attaching it to the outside of the main bag and had to get the seam ripper out yet again :(
Not to mention that I spent the first hour of sewing with the bobbin winder still on, which made it noisy and worryingly heavy going -- the last thing I had done before putting the machine away a year or so ago had been to wind a fresh bobbin, and I had evidently forgotten to disengage it before putting the lid back on! I anxiously applied oil to all the oiling points in an attempt to cure the heavy running and the knocking sound, and only ended up with oil gathering and dripping down the needle for the next few hours :-p
Answer: it doesn't stay loose -- if it does, it isn't nearly long enough to tuck in -- and it isn't a flap. It is sewn in along the edges to form a 'hood' that is turned inside out and pulled down to hide most of the reverse side of the fabric. (The basic problem is that instead of sewing wrong-side to wrong-side as would be normal procedure, you have to sew the pocket onto the inside of the bag where it won't show, and thus when it gets inverted this inside section ends up on the outside of the pocket! What the picture at the end doesn't illustrate is that you end up with about 1/3 of the back of the reversed pocket actually being the inside-out main bag showing, whatever you do.)
Fortunately in my case the inside and outside of the fabric are not all that different, so it's just a faded version of the main print.
You are supposed to fold the pocket strip unevenly, right sides together, until it forms a square, then sew round the three bottom edges of this square with the shorter end on the inside in order to trap down the sides of this shorter half, leaving the top fold (and the floating lower edge of the shorter half) free. You now have a patch pocket where the upper two-thirds of the patch is double fabric right-sides together and the bottom third is only a single thickness.
When you stuff the rest of the bag into this square pocket you will end up with the reverse side showing all over, save for a thin slice of the right side fabric visible underneath the doubled section of the pocket patch. You can now turn this doubled section inside out to reveal the right side of the fabric and pull it down over the open end of the bag as a hood (not quite what I had visualised from 'flap the little flap over', and hence not what I was trying to achieve...)
The first time I did this (having already unpicked the whole thing once, after leaving the bottom open and sewing the fold to the top edge of the bag so that it could be stuffed up into this upside-down pocket-- unfortunately if you do that the smart little right-sides-out pocket bag thus created isn't nearly large enough, because the pattern sizing relies on creating a patch pocket using the reverse side of the bag itself to form the back of the pocket, rather than inserting a separate pocket bag) I automatically sewed the pocket on right sides together, which meant I ended up attaching it to the outside of the main bag and had to get the seam ripper out yet again :(
Not to mention that I spent the first hour of sewing with the bobbin winder still on, which made it noisy and worryingly heavy going -- the last thing I had done before putting the machine away a year or so ago had been to wind a fresh bobbin, and I had evidently forgotten to disengage it before putting the lid back on! I anxiously applied oil to all the oiling points in an attempt to cure the heavy running and the knocking sound, and only ended up with oil gathering and dripping down the needle for the next few hours :-p