The improved cosmetic bag

As some people may know from reading yesterdays blog post, I made my first sewing machine project! A tiny cosmetic bag! (which I actually use to carry earphones,  but shhhhh...) you can find that post here. Well in that post I promised another about an improved bag (which will actually serve its purpose!) and here it is!

Basically the bag is just bigger and made with better fabrics, with slight improvements on stiches, it is still very much a beginners efforts though!

I chose the dog pattern fabric because it reminded me of the Radley pattern, so it made it look a bit more upmarket! ;) maybe... probably not! haha! but oh well! the dogs look really cute and maybe someone will believe its a Radley one!

Thanks for reading
Charlotte x

My first sewing machine project!

As you may know I have a sewing machine now, so immediately I started trolling pinterest for inspiration and projects I could do. I decided I really need a little cosmetic bag to carry around in my new work bag (which has no inside pockets to hide things), so that's what my first project was!

This was the tutorial I used, it was fairly easy to follow the images and I even managed to resize it to suit a zipper I had recycled from an old pair of jeans (I'll put the measurements I used on a separate post at some point and how I resized it in case anyone wants to know).

Hilariously the part that I find takes the longest when making something using a sewing machine is the preparations e.g. the cutting out templates and then marking and cutting the fabric. The sewing part was the easiest and quickest part!

When I was sewing the bag I found the hardest part was the zipper as I don't have a zipper foot yet, which meant that the teeth on the zipper would push the foot away and subsequently cause my sewing line to go a bit wonky from time to time, however as I used thread that matches the bag, you can't really notice. Thankfully you can pick up whole sets of sewing machine foot attachments from amazon really cheap (and most of them fit a variety of sewing machines which is useful). I have a Toyota machine and these are the ones I'm thinking of getting.

The pattern I chose because, it was the best one out of the fabric I had at the time! I was a bit short on supplies! hence the recycling of the zipper too. However the fabric does look rather nice anyway, I would have chosen a different lining fabric, but that was from an old t-shirt that I wanted to use up.
The bag itself ended up being too small to hold much more than lipsticks and stuff so I now use it to hold the earphones I got for my birthday, and it does a splendid job!

I have managed to make an improved version of this one and I shall be sharing it soon on the blog so look out for it :)

Thanks for reading!
Charlotte x

I have a sewing machine!!!

Whoop! I finally have a sewing machine! After so much time waiting for the right moment to get one, and finding the right machine for me (basically one that isn't too expensive) I finally found one and it only cost me £20!

It was one of those moments where you hear about someone selling something you want/need from a friend of a friends... relatives friend. In this instance I found out from my partners Grandma that her friends cleaner was trying to sell her machine after upgrading to a computerised model. So I immediately jumped on the opportunity and called the lady.

She was so helpful, I had told her I had never used a sewing machine before and very kindly offered to show me the basics. Which turned out to be very useful and happened to save me a lot of time, as I would have been sat watching YouTube tutorials for hours before I could even think about using the machine!

I'm so excited to share all the projects I will be working on, and it will be such a great journey to take together as I'm a complete beginner with a sewing machine so it will be interesting to document my progress and for other beginners to come along for the ride!

Anyway... thanks for reading!

Charlotte x