Category Archives: Bags

What happens when you want a new bag to take along on your beach vacation and then you run out of time? You get a cute bag to add to the stock in your Etsy shop. Sara Lawson’s Sew Sweetness Paladin Pouch is a brilliant little multi-purpose bag. It comes in three sizes, Small (7” long x 5” tall x 2½” deep), Medium (9” long x 6½” tall x 3” deep), and Large (10½” long x 8” tall x 3½” deep). Sizes Medium and Large have an interior zippered pocket. All of them have a single exterior zipper that encloses … Continue reading →

Baby Boy (okay, so he’s 45!) has been traveling much more in his life lately, including several trips overseas. Years ago I made zippered “Pet Mesh” bags to hold the charging cords for their various electronic devices. A couple of weeks ago, after his Christmas/New Years/Wife’s Birthday trip to Austria and Italy, Dear Son #2 asked for a new bag that had greater depth for holding his international converters. And a new bag was born, at his request. There’s no greater compliment than your own child asking for a new bag!! The pattern I use for such bags is the … Continue reading →

Two weeks after returning from vacation and spending lots of time editing photos and writing my vacation travelogue, I just realized I never wrote a post about the last bag I made before vacation. . . . I actually started the fabric preparation to make another Sew Sweetness Paladin bag (that pattern I love to hate). As I started fusing the first exterior piece to the interfacing, I realized, to my horror, that the fabric was actually directional and I had cut it upside down. (Look at the black eyeglasses frames at the bottom of the first picture. Imagine those … Continue reading →

Some bags take longer to finish than others. This one has been hanging out in my sewing room since … early February, 2019! As I type this, we are 27 hours away from 2020! That’s a long time to be a WIP (Work In Progress). What got in the way of its completion? The problems I was having with my primary bagmaking machine. I was having problems with “birdsnests” (nasty tangles of thread that mass on the underside of a seam) which the machine repair tech called “user error.” My reaction to her statement: “Grumble, grumble.” You might be wondering … Continue reading →

If you’re not a musician, you may not understand how frenetic December is for working musicians. Churches, clubs, performing arts organizations—they all want to provide lovely entertainment or worship experiences for their members or patrons. That means we working musicians must learn music, attend rehearsals, and then perform. And when it’s all done, we’re exhausted. Many of us are totally disinterested in hearing one more note of holiday music. Speaking for myself, I prefer to skip the whole Christmas celebration. I really don’t want gifts. I don’t want an enormous dinner. My best Christmases have been either ones over which … Continue reading →

In my posts, “Meet the Paladin” and “A Pineapple for You,” you saw a bag I made for one of the leads of the Youngstown State University production of “Cabaret.” (Note: The recipient loved the bag. 💜) In the show, an unseen 🌟 is the person who records a song (the Nazi national anthem) to be played from a gramophone at a critical point in the show. The recording is supposed to sound like the voice of a young boy, scratchy like an old 78 RPM recording would be. The director of a local youth stock theatre company recommended one … Continue reading →

You know that feeling of joy and satisfaction when you finally finish a project that took a lot of thinking? I have that feeling this morning. I have just finished a bag for a student who played Fräu Schneider in “Cabaret.” The Youngstown State University production of “Cabaret,” for which I served as rehearsal accompanist, closed just over two weeks ago. That was just in time for Thanksgiving week, the last week of the semester, and finals/juries week. <Sidenote On> If you’re not a musician who had applied music lessons in college, you might not know the term “jury” as … Continue reading →