Ruffled Hobo Bag (minus the ruffles) from the Sew Serendipity Bags Book

Well, these are not great pictures, but I wanted to get this out there.  This bag was a labor of love and "making it work."  The pattern is the Ruffled Hobo Bag on the cover of the Sew Serendipity Bags book.  Since my motto lately seems to be sew "Sew Everything!!" I decided to try a bag a few months ago.  Well, actually, this journey started like 6 months ago, but whatever.

I wanted to sew with scraps from my stash, and I wanted it to be something I could carry around every day, so not pink flowery cotton prints for this version.  I settled on a navy wool with  navy leather for the handles, using up some luxury scraps I couldn't bear to part with, so that was good.  I got the silver buckle and zipper pull at JoAnn's for some pizzazz, but I have no idea why I got a plastic zipper.  I should have gotten one with pretty silver teeth.  Anyway...

 Everything came together very nicely, until I got to the straps.  The pattern just wasn't designed for leather and wool. It was designed for quilting cottons.  Duh, Jennifer.  Instead of the sew-right-sides-together-and-turn method of strap-making, I just glued them wrong-sides-together and top-stitched.  No problem there.  However, no matter how I tried, I could not get my machine to sew the handles to the bag!  I have a nice machine and a leather needle, but two layers of leather plus about eight layers of wool plus heavy interfacing were a no-go, understandably so.

So this bag sat around almost-finished for months in my sewing room until I decided to get out the glue and just finish the dang thing any way possible.  I was able to sew the straps on a bit, with many skipped stitches and a very uneven seam, but at least it was pretty secure.  Then, I wrapped a scrap of leather around the handle/bag join and glued that sucker down.  Ideal?  No.  BUT, I did have a cute handmade bag that I carried around for months... until the glue finally gave out and one of the straps detached and I let it go, but not before liberating that cute zipper pull for a future bag.  

The inside is really cute, too.  It is pink polka dots and has nice pockets, but for some reason I didn't take any pictures of it.  I learned a ton  making this bag, and I do think it turned out cute.  It won't be my last.