i still love my new toy

Even though Old Man Winter didn't get the memo that he's overstayed his welcome, I'm in spring cleaning mode. I just sent off a bunch of yarn I sold from my destash page and I want to spend a little time today doing some more decluttering and clearing out stuff I am not going to use. Even Stuart caught the bug and managed to offload a bunch of old electronic gear on craigslist this weekend!

In the spirit of Out With the Old, I spent some time yesterday making a very nice sturdy tote bag to donate to the kids' school. The school's big fundraiser fun fair is coming up in a couple of weeks and includes a raffle and silent auction. I already spend a fair amount of time volunteering in the classroom and with the school's Outdoor Education committee, so I didn't want to pile on the volunteer hours working at the fundraiser, too. However, I'm happy to contribute a few handmade items to the auction, especially since I have my new sewing machine to play with!

I made this tote bag out of sturdy outdoor canvas fabric leftover from an abandoned project from last year. I had originally bought it to make curtains for the preschool Anya was attending. A few days after I bought the fabric, we found out the preschool was being forced to relocate. There was a lot of Drama with a capital D, and in the meantime I didn't think it was worth making curtains for a preschool that was going to move in a few months anyway. Ergo I was stuck with this fabric! I had bought solid colors, too, including the blue you see there on the outside pocket and handles. Most of the solids I turned into tote bags that were then printed with the preschool logo and sold at a fundraiser in the spring, but I have a lot of this dotted stuff left, enough for 3-4 more tote bags this size, I think.

The lining is plain old solid cotton leftover from a costume I made for Anya last summer. I'm out of any fabric that would be suitable for lining, so I'd have to buy more if I made more of these dotted bags…and buying more kind of defeats the purpose of using stuff up, so for now, this is the only bag I plan to make.

I designed the bag myself, but that's nothing special, really. I did the top edge a little differently than usual and added fusible fleece to the green lining to give the bag more structure.

This bag looks pretty good, if I do say so. I know the new machine made a big difference because it can sew straight and true. See that topstitching there? My old machine just wouldn't have made it look that nice, especially on this kind of fabric, which is stiff and with a wide weave.

What will I sew next? I don't know! But I feel like I'm kind of on a roll here.