It’s still true–I hate sewing.
I braved Valley traffic to go to Jo-Ann’s last night after work, where I was rewarded with a renewed stock of magnetic snaps. Woot! I, um, bought them all. I had to! Three packages of three snaps each, for only $1.29 per pack? Hells yes! I also bought three different fabric squares/remnants for possible liners, needle and thread, a thimble (so glad for that one!), a roll of stuff to iron seams instead of sewing (another woot!), a bottle of liquid seaming stuff to avoid sewing (didn’t actually use this one), a button I didn’t use (too small), and a crochet magazine.
I got home, had my yummy pot roast dinner, watched Jeopardy, and then pulled out the ironing board. And then dusted it, because it had been that long since I’d last used it as more than a hanger for plastic bags. The iron, also rarely used, still worked the way I vaguely remembered, so that was cool.
Then it came to the lining part. I’d printed directions from HelloKnitty.com–they didn’t help much. My first attempt failed, because my bag is oval, not square, so the liner was too small. Good thing I bought spare squares! My second attempt went better–I layed out the fabric, put the bag on top, folded the fabric, then cut around the bag. Unscientific, but I hate measuring tapes. I folded seams, ironed that nifty stitch witchery stuff to glue them together (not a very strong glue, unfortunately), popping it into the bag over and over for a trial and error approach to getting the right size. Got it close enough, then attempted to sew actual stitches over the glue, to make it extra strong. Ha! Did one side seam, remembered why I hate sewing, and decided the second side wasn’t worth it.
I added the magnetic snaps to the lining (woot! easy peasy!), then put the seamed up lining in the bag, and pinned the top to the inside edge of the bag–nearly perfect size! Woot! (Good thing in the end that the glue wasn’t that strong.) Then came more sewing, since I couldn’t just leave the pins in the bag–phooey. This is where I was very glad I’d purchased the thimble. In the end, the stitch was uneven and very ugly, but did I care? No! It was finished, the lining was attached, and I’d only lost one needle in the process! (I found it later.)
Then came the shiny button embellishment for the outside. The button I’d purchased was way too small, so I pulled out the pretty plastic “jewels” from last weekend and found a pretty blue one that worked nicely. Then I had to glue it to the pin-back, except, I had to find the glue gun. (It was in the storage box on the top corner shelf of my closet–joy.) I don’t know why I keep using glue guns, ’cause the glue rarely holds. The jewel popped off the first time I tried to attach the pin to the bag, so I had to add layers and layers of hot glue around all the seams and along the top of the pin back. It should at least last through the auction–I hope.
In all, not including the trip to Jo-Ann’s (where I didn’t buy yarn, btw–go me!), it took me 2.5 hours to line that stupid bag. OMIGOD do I hate sewing!