Today I am tickled pink to have Cheryl Schenck  in the sewists seat and to here tell us about the super amazing bag she made with the pattern Mommy Poppins Bag by SewFearless.  I had every plan to make this bag as well and use it as my on-the-go quilting bag..  in fact I got some bitchin red suede and was ready to go when life took a turn and I ended up opening a fabric store!  So my red suede waits and I sit and swoon looking at the amazing bag that Cheryl has made.

 

Take it away Cheryl…..

 

Made by Cheryl Schenck

Made by Cheryl Schenck

I have a confession to make: I’ve never seen Mary Poppins. I know, terrible. I even have an eight-year-old daughter. Yet, when I saw the Mommy Poppins bag from Sew Fearless, I knew I had to make it. I love the satchel-style opening, and it looked professional. I got excited for the sew-along and ordered my hardware and waited. I had already bought the fabric by the time it came.

Another confession: I am impatient. I just couldn’t wait. I had to sew this bag now. So I did. And I’m so happy I did!

I have to admit, I was a bit nervous. I have lots of experience as a quilter: I have worked in a fabric shop and as a quilting teacher for several years, and now I make commission quilts. But this was different. My bag is made from home dec weight fabric and the accents are a heavy corduroy. I shouldn’t have worried. It really was pretty easy to put together.

My biggest mistakes were fairly easy to fix. I’ll tell you about them so you can avoid making the same mistakes:

First, I sewed the rounded patches on the bag body and not the pocket. This really just involved some unpicking. Shame on me for not following instructions. Also, when sewing the frame casings on the bag, I sewed them to the inside. I really have no idea why I made that particular mistake. Too late at night? Second glass of wine? We’ll never know.

Anyway, everything else went pretty smoothly. I even had a bit of fortuitous luck. When I traced the rounded corner units, I didn’t follow the pattern layout exactly. I used scraps instead. What happened was I turned two of the pattern pieces 90 degrees. This meant that when I used them on the bag, I was able to lay them out such that the lines in the corduroy looked like they were wrapping horizontally around the bag. Had I followed the pattern layout, two of them would have been vertical instead of horizontal and it wouldn’t have looked right. Yay for happy accidents!

By Cheryl Schenck

By Cheryl Schenck

One other note: the pattern indicates that your bag frame with come with instructions on how to take it apart. Mine didn’t. But, thanks to my former IT life, I happened to have a tiny screwdriver set. Taking the frame apart was a breeze. I just made sure that I unscrewed one tiny screw from each frame half, as opposed to taking them both off of the same half. If that makes no sense, it will when you see yours. If you don’t take one off from each half, you won’t be able to feed your frame through the casing.

That’s it! I carry it every day and love to show it off. Now on to my next project: finally watching Mary Poppins.

 

Thank you Cheryl!!!!

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