This bag turned out great!
When I first saw Anna's pattern, I knew that I wanted to make this bag for myself, and I wanted to use laminate (like Anna had). I figured that it would be the perfect bag to start the school year! Then, as I was making the bag, I went through a period of indecision... As I started cutting, I thought the bag was going to be too small and I was a bit disappointed and discouraged just because I thought I would have to sell the bag or do a giveaway, since I didn't think it would fill my work need. But, I kept sewing and in the end all turned out well!
I love that is has the little zip pocket on the front. When I travel from school to school, I am always losing my keys in the depths of my bag. Now, problem solved! Plus, I can stick my phone in there, especially on the days when it is raining.
The bag came together fairly quickly, too. The most time consuming part was fusing the interfacing and the fleece to the different pieces, and that had more to do with the fact that I really had to be careful because I was using laminate!
Before this bag, I had never sewn a whole bag with laminate. I have to say, it was a bit fiddly. You can't pin it, unless you want a bunch of random pin holes in your bag. Lucky for me, I have about 30 of those small Clover clips. (p.s. the price I saw when I just posted this link, $13 is an awesome price!) The trouble that I ran into when I was using the laminate was when I was top stitching. I'm a bit particular about my top stitching and I want it to be just-so. Typically, I have a blind hem stitch foot that I like to use for top stitching because then my sewing isn't at all wiggly... it gives a very professional finish. Well, laminate sticks to regular sewing feet. I already had a Teflon foot, which helped, but then the bottom laminate layer would stick to my table! I had to hold up the bottom layer so it would stick and that did help.
In the end, my bag turned out awesome and I'm looking forward to using it as I head back to work on Thursday!
