Meet Floppy, Wonky, and Passable:

Last Friday, I set out to make a box bag for a gift and somehow ended up with three! I really wanted to mail it out on Saturday, and it was a very long, frustrating evening.

The first bag is Floppy, my attempt at constructing the box bag correctly (unlike the previous attempt). The construction was successful, but I didn’t use strong enough interfacing and the bag wound up being extremely flimsy. It does make a perfect beanbag for Igor.

I’m using the bag now - a skein of Malabrigo gives the bag a bit more structure, but I didn’t think it was good enough to gift. I do love the fabric - cute little peas from Superbuzzy. Eat your veggies!

The center bag is Wonky, king of the uneven seams. At the end of the tutorial, you pinch out some triangles for the end seams, and I could not get the seams to be parallel. This bag has pretty heavy sewn-in interfacing, and I blame the interfacing for all of my issues. Bah!

The blue and green bag is Passable, the best of the bunch. I used slightly lighter interfacing, fused to the lining fabric. The seams are still a bit crooked, but it’s the best of the lot. I did add an extra step to the box bag assembly - concealed seams, to contain the raw edges so that strings don’t fly away and embed themselves in your yarn.

Next time I make one of these, I’m going to create pattern pieces that have the triangle parts cut out ahead of time. I think that this will help me line up the handle, too - it’s really difficult to align it without any straight edge as a reference point. There will definitely be more box bags in my future - I went to the Quilt Festival last weekend, and my fabric stash was considerably enhanced!

It’s Houston in summer. It’s too hot to play outside. Icky sticky ew. And so, I huddled inside on Sunday, put on my npr podcasts, and got my stitch on.

The Simple Bib from Behind-the-Rules Sewing, photographed on the bias to disguise the wonky topstitching. Very, very simple - I think it took me more time to enlarge the pattern at my local photocopy place than it took to sew this. All it needs is a snap.

Next up, a box bag, tutorial here. I figured this should be easy peasy, given that it’s all straight seams. Surely this should be easier than the bunny, right?

Yes, I proceeded to sew it together the wrong way. You cut a rectangle and install a zipper, and I made pretty much the only mistake that’s possible with this pattern. I also used an invisible zipper, which looks just plain silly. I didn’t even consider that I could be putting this together incorrectly until I was completely done.

Compared to a real box bag:

Yeah. I’ve got a fabulous pencil case.

Or the perfect sock yarn cozy. Insert your favorite cylindrical object here.