Bag-alicious weekend

I had to think of a different heading, since last time was crafty weekend.  First, a shout-out to Jenny, whose recognition for the draft dodgers of my last post is overdue!  Thanks, Jenny!

This weekend started with a terrible beach bag-gone-wrong fiasco.  I had a huge bag in my mind, with all kinds of bells and whistles (zippers, terry-cloth, pockets) that I spent most of Thursday on then I just had to abandon it.  And boy am I glad that I did.  
I ended up using some of my new Amy Butler fabric to make a different (beach, but probably too small to really be useful for the beach) bag. I used contrasting canvas fabric for an inner lining with one big pocket.  Remember, folks, clashing is the new matching!  

Sunday turned into a huge 

project day; Jenny, Ruthie and I had brunch at Feast in Wicker Park (boyfriends tagged along for the brunch part), then we ventured on to the Needle Shop, where we found more than enough fabric prints to get our creative juices flowing.  Ruthie picked up an Amy Butler purse pattern which I had bought a few weeks ago for myself, so we decided it was a sign and hurried home (after a quick trip to JoAnn Fabrics) to get started on our bags.

Ruthie, being a newbie, and me, being an interfacing scaredy cat, were glad to have Jenny with us every step of the way.  We got straight to work, ironing - here's Ruthie with her hot, orange faux-bois fabric - 

and cutting  - here's me with my red damask-y fabric and my yellow bird fabric (the purses are reversible so we needed 2 fabrics that complemented each other)

and then sewing, of course. My poor little sewing machine has never seen so many layers of fabric all at once! By 9 o'clock we were more than half-way done with both my and Ruthie's bags, but we all have lives and jobs, so everyone needed to go home. Psssht!

Anyway, here's my almost-finished purse (that's the fabric for the other side, underneath it on the ironing board.

We didn't get a real picture of Ruthie's mostly-done purse, but this one will do.  Here's Jenny, modeling it for us (although a little upside down . . . )

Thanks to Nate, for making us all dinner and cupcakes for dessert while we were hard at work.  Thanks also to Nate, for being my nerdy boyfriend and having fun at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Saturday night, listening to Bartok (his fave), Debussy (my fave) and a brand new symphony by Arvo Part which I enjoyed, despite its not having any definite endings to the movements.