Santa's Post-Christmas Sewing Sweat Shop: Day One

Good judgment comes from experience, 

and experience comes from bad judgment.

~ Frederick P. Brooks

Yesterday I decided to start on my Christmas sewing projects by tackling the Not-Ugly Car Trash Bags - which account for four out of my nine projects.

I was hoping to finish them all completely - I didn't quite do that, but I did accomplish a lot.  As you can see, I'm basically missing the top binding on one of them and the long strap on all of them. (Oh, plus attaching my labels - here, pinned into place.)

The pattern is quite simple - the main bag (cut 2), a front pocket, and a short and long strap (with a buckle).  I purchased single fold bias tape, and I'm a little bit sorry - I think the binding along the top of the pocket and the top of the bag would look nice a bit wider...

Trash isn't always dry and clean, so I decided to line the bag with a plastic layer.  I could think of two ways to do this - sew the lining bag separately and insert it into the fabric bag OR attach the pieces of lining to the pieces of the bag and then stitch up the bag, treating the double layers as if they were a single fabric.

I chose the first, thinking of the advantage of being able to hide the seams between the two layers.  In hindsight, I wish I had done the second and used french seams, because - as always! - I had trouble getting the two bags to be exactly the same size.  And, as you can imagine, the plastic liner doesn't have any give to help with a less-than-perfect match.  

Oh well, next time I'll know...  ;)

As you can see in the picture above, the straps are sewn on last, along the side seam, to the inside of the bag and over top of the binding.  

Guess why I wasn't able to finish these yesterday.  

Around 9:30 pm I ran out of white thread!  Can you believe it?  Anyways, I'm off to get some thread this morning and then my goal for today is to finish these bags and make three more gifts - two bed pockets and one set of place mats and napkins.  

Wish me luck!  :)