A quick project: one shoe bag assembled!

I can't believe how quick this came together, I am really pleased.

I read a Facebook post by a friend on a bag with drawstring top she made recently, and bemoaned the fact that I intended to make a bag for a pair of suede shoes I don't wear often (to prevent them getting dusty) and that I just hadn't "gotten around to it" yet, which set off alarm bells: I do that all the time, plan something so that I can firmly see it in front of my inner eye, and that seems to satisfy my creative urges: imagining things.

That's not good enough. So I thought I'd have a quick look in my mahooassive stash, and promptly found this pretty crafts fabric that I bought to make a knitting needle container (one day). So I'd rather use this now and look for another fabric that I like better for all my knitting needles. The thing is that I really love all those cute square motifs but I so beyond not fond of the green of the background colour, that I just couldn't face using this. Which was the problem.

I now realise that the fabric motifs would be great cut out and then sewn onto other fabrics so I am sure that the remainder of this fabric will serve me well. There is nothing better then getting stuck into a project because it will tell you something you didn't know before. And no amount of imagining can replace the actual doing and achieving. I ought to hang that on the wall! As a motto.

Back to the project at hand before I get even more excited about the potential of this fabric:

I put the pair of shoes onto the fabric in a position that I thought they would naturally fall into when in the finished bag. Then I measured across and up and down to make sure the piece would be large enough.

Then I sewed this into a tube, flatted that so the seam would sit at the back centre and sewed across the bottom. Then I overlocked those exposed seams. I folded the top raw edge under twice, pressed and then made the one error of the project (mistakes are great for learning, I can recommend that) - I sewed a buttonhole through all the layers of the tunnel - which of course means that I can't feed a string through the button hole opening into the tunnel: the buttonhole edges are keeping it closed. Duh.

I helped myself by threading a needle with the length of embroidery thread (for the string) and poked that through the button hole sides. Which makes the button hole completely redundant, but hey. Let's not be pernickety.

One shoe bag done and dusted. So to speak.

I might make more for other shoes, but just using a motif or two on different colour fabrics. It'll make a nice set without being too samey. I'm happy!