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Xmas present 2 - pouches

This was what was called the emergency xmas present. I'd had a vague idea to make these, and possibly even gift one to the recipient at some point, but had mostly been focussing on other people for presents. Then I couldn't find anything in the shops and went and made these in a very short space of time (ok, about a week, but I was working, and had to wait for stuff to show up).



These are view C from Butterick B5936, which they call "Safari bag and accessories" and I call "LARP POUCHES YAY!" I have a bunch of Butterick "historical accessory patterns" that I'm planning on making my way through, as they seem useful, but anyway.
This is supposed to be a simple pattern. It is. Possibly if you're not me.

First things first, I'd recently purchased and ripped apart a suede jacket (no photos, I didn't take any. It was a fairly generic women's suede jacket bought from a charity shop with intentions of it becoming pouches for me). That seemed like a good place to start, but then I realised I had nothing in the stash that would go with the brown, nor did I have any interfacing, so I hurried off to Minerva Crafts and purchased some green felt (with adhesive on the back), some interfacing (which is a) why I went to Minerva and b) turned out to be the wrong stuff) and some green fabric that looked about the right shade to go with the brown (I was slightly off; the felt is a better match).

In the mean time, I thought "I know, that person has a character that spends lots of time with mine, and both have very similar colour schemes, I could make something to work with that" since conveniently I had a load of black, we'll call is suede, but probably more like very thin leather. I have no idea where it came from. There's a vague consensus that it was probably once a jacket that became old school leather armour that then got ripped apart. Whatever, the rule is, if it's in my house for more than a year, it's mine (unless you're paying me to do stuff with it). And I had some blue, err, something (it's stretchy, shiny metallic and an arse to sew; I made the lining of a cloak out of it many years ago and hated it) that is a match to my character's kit.
So off I went.
I cut all the parts. Conveniently the package with the interfacing showed up the next day. I didn't laugh at the fact that the fabric bits look like penii.
I cut stuff out, interfaced the fabric, interfaced some leftover black felt and some more of the thin suede stuff to the suede and started sewing.
I even made an attempt at contrast stitching.

I then discovered that sewing the fabric parts to the suede was going to be interesting. Mostly because it's a level of ease that my machine was not interested in managing. And was a bit too 3 dimensional. I managed up to where it started to curve, and then gave up and had to hand stitch. Not a problem. My hand sewing is only a bit like a drunken spider. The main problem was sewing through felt, interfacing and suede with a not amazingly good needle.
Whatever, I managed. It looked ok.
Then the whole thing got sewn together (3 layers of suede, 1 of felt, 3 of interfacing and 2 of fabric; I may bitch about my machine sometimes, but she manages some miracles at times).
I then put that aside as I lacked for a suitable button, and I was having a mild panic that the belt loop wouldn't be wide enough.

On to the green and brown one.
Because I was trying to be a smartarse, rather than buying more interfacing AND felt, I bought felt with a sticky back. In fairness, this did mean that I could manage this cool picture (the whole thing fit on one sleeve), but it also meant that any needle or pin I consequently used has ended up with sticky stuff all over it.
I have learned my lesson.
I did extend the belt loop piece slightly, as I still wasn't sure if it would be big enough.

Construction was much the same as before. The green fabric was horrible stuff and it serves me right for hurried shopping in the sale section. It's white on the reverse, doesn't take well to being pinned and was slightly stiffer once I'd interfaced two layers of it together (so you couldn't see the white) than I really wanted.

Here are a couple of photos mid-construction, showing my horrid tack stitching and how far I managed to machine sew it. And you can see that at certain angles, the fabric bits are a bit phallic looking.

By this point I'd acquired some buttons from the knitting shop, and had tried to, as per the instructions, fit one after the whole black and blue one had been constructed. This was hilarious. I have really small hands, but even I was having problems manoeuvring inside to move the needle around. So when it came to the brown one, I attached the button before I sewed the back on. Much better.

Once the back was on, I dug out some brown leather thonging and attached that, and voila.

Now for the button for the black and blue one.
Annoyingly, I couldn't find a dark button that looked right, so I bought a bunch of pale wooden ones, and attacked one with my pyrography tool. This led to the house stinking of burning wood, burning whatever they used to coat the button, and very hot metal.
It was a rock and roll friday night, but it yielded success, and that's what counts!



As I said, attaching this button was a pain in the backside, and in future I will ignore the instructions and do it before assembling the entire thing.
I found some black leather thonging (in my LARP jewelery box) and attached that, and they were both done.
Yay!

All in all, probably about 6 hours work between the two of them, and that includes tracing and cutting the patterns, burning the button and trying to work out if I could sew the entire thing by machine.
It turns out that the belt loop was big enough first time round, and they went down pretty well.

And by the end of it, I'd bent 2 pins, 1 needle and gunked up one sewing machine needle beyond redemption.

YAY!



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