By Annie: A Place for Everything

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I'm going on a quilt retreat the week after Easter, my first!

I've already prepared a quilt and cut all parts, I'd rather do it at home, I don't want to have to take tons of stuff with me. But I will certainly take tons of sewing utensils with me. So I definitely need a bag for it (any excuse is good for a new bag!). This time it will be Annie's A place for everything.
I bought the pattern at quiltmania.de, they now carry almost everything from Annie, thank God. But I didn't pay attention when ordering and ordered the german version. Shouldn't be a problem, should it? I mean, I am german after all.
Uh - oh. I sewed sooo many bags of Annie, all in English. I know her expressions and what she wants. I don't know the German terms for it so well and had to think quite often what was meant. (Someone who starts with Annie's bags first in German shouldn't have the problem.)

Except for the zippers I had everything at home, so I could start right away.
The outer bag is supereasy in construction, I only looked into the pattern because of the dimensions. Yes - I should have had a closer look. The seam allowance and the binding are attached to the outside! Too late. On my bag they are inside. This makes the bag look completely different (not so boxy, more like a handbag), but the function is not affected.
I skipped the handle, but added 2 long carrying straps. Accordingly, I turned the openings of the two mesh pockets so that the opening is at the top when carrying. Then nothing slips out, especially at the open pocket without zipper.

 

Until then everything had gone well. The problems started with the two 'book pages'.
Annie suggests sewing both pages of the book with vinyl pockets because they are so transparent. But the vinyl is quite stiff, I made the second book page with mesh. It's stretchy, so it holds a lot.

For the stiff vinyl Annie suggests folds. The folding according to the instructions was easy - but now you have to sew the folded vinyl on the zipper. My machine did it without an accident, the result also looks good:


But appearance is not everything - function also counts! And these two zippers on the left page of the book page can't be opened and closed very well, they always got stuck on the folds of the vinyl. I tried to shorten the vinyl  afterwards, but it didn't work very well.
On Youtube there is a video by Annie in which she shows 2 methods for attaching zippers on vinyl. The first method is the one from the pattern, the second method is a bit different. I used this method for the right sheet of the book page.

This looks really bad! But at least - the zipper slides effortlessly over the folds.

 

And here's the next one: I didn't read the pattern exactly (my mistake, I know) and constructed the pockets too wide. I thought it would be covered with Velcro afterwards. It was - but you can see the blue zipper very well through the white velcro tape.

 

Conclusion: I cannot sew vinyl bags with folds. If I have to do it again, I have to work on it quite a bit. Or read the instructions carefully, grin.


The finished book page:


On the other hand, mesh pockets with zippers are easy, as I have sewn many of them before.
Or aren't they?
Here I was sloppy, you can see the blue zipper band at the top behind the binding.


And these divided pockets are tricky. Again: I didn't read the pattern and just sewed them. I don't know if these two zippers will last for ever or if they will open at some point. Will show up in use.

 

And again the too-wide pockets that shine through the white velcro.
You see that I sewed both pages of the book parallel and sewed the velcro tape on both at the very end. If I had finished one page of the book completely... then the Velcro problem wouldn't have happened with the second. Well. Again something learned!


the finished page:

 

The finished bag, stuffed with the 2 pages:

 


Even if this bag is not perfect - I like it. And I'm looking forward to filling it with my stuff!

 

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