Finally

It only took two months, but I finally got my new makeup bag done last night. I got a sewing machine in May, after lots of jealousy over all the cool projects out there in bloggy-land. I spent a lot of time playing with aprons, and placemats and iPod covers, all of which are bright orange, because I had a huge orange sheet to practice with and I didn't want to waste any good fabric. My first non-orange project was a little makeup bag. The outer layer is from a green striped remnant that I picked up cheap and the inner lining is a gorgeous Robert Kauffman fabric that was a gift from my mom (and that I was terrified to cut into).



It took approximately 30 minutes to make the whole thing, plus three hours to handstitch the lining in. Yes, I am a very slow hand sewer, and I was also being obsessive. I loved it so much that I immediately made another one, exactly the same, and gave it to my sister.

Sadly, it is just a little bit too small to hold my all my makeup comfortably and I decided to make another one with different fabric. That's when I learned I must have just gotten lucky the first time. I carefully cut and measured and pressed and sewed and when I tried to put the two pieces together, the inner lining was too big. I ripped out stitches and re-did it and got the same result. Apparently, the inner lining stretches a LOT and the outer layer is not at all stretchy. I did what any sane person would do and shoved it in my work basket for a month.

Last night, with the Olympics on for moral support, I dug it out and re-did it. It took two more tries, and a lot of swearing, but I finally conquered that bag!



The outer lining is black, and just faintly striped.



The inner lining is a flower print, which I picked because I liked the way the black flowers jumped out. Again, a gift from my mom, whose fabric stash is unbelievable.



And it holds all my makeup!



Just for comparison, here are both bags. I tried to pick the most easily identifiable object to show the scale - after all, who doesn't know the exact size of a tube of Great Lash?

I am so relieved that I got that finished. I have a hard time moving on to other projects if I have a ton of half finished work.