Sewing With Nancy

I love to sew. Yet if a project takes too long to create I'll be the first to pass and look for an easier yet equally fulfilling sewing venture. With that being said you might surmise that "easy" is the key word in this three-part series of Sewing with Nancy. During this episode of "12 Easy Sew Bags" I'm showcasing handbags that can be created in an evening. Each bag has personality while featuring a unique sewing technique. The glam bag is our first feature. Scraps of silk, small lengths of ribbon, and buttons combine to give the bag an enchanting appearance. "12 Easy Sew Bags" that's what's coming up next on Sewing With Nancy. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman is made possible by Baby Lock a complete line of sewing, quilting and embroidery machines and sergers. Baby Lock, for the love of sewing. Madeira, specializing in embroidery, quilting and special effect threads because creativity is never black and white. Koala Sewing Cabinets hand built in the USA by American craftsmen customized for you. Clover makers of sewing, knitting, quilting and embroidery products for over 25 years. Experience the Clover difference. Amazing Designs and Klass needles. The glam bag has many different features to it using interesting silk fabric buttons and ribbon. The inspiration to create this bag was finding this ribbon. It has a variety of colors in it. We liked the selection. Then we went to our scrap box and found some pieces that coordinated. You could use silk, cotton any type of fabric that you may have because you're going to be working on a base fabric. If you were with us during the first episode of this three-part series you know that the foundation, the inside of the bag is equally as important as what's on the outside. One of the main foundation fabrics that I like to use is a cotton canvas. Sometimes it's called cotton duck canvas. Where it got its name, I don't know. But it's an interesting canvas. It's an inexpensive fabric. It's not lightweight, but it has some support to it. We're going to be sewing on this foundation. Now you cut out your favorite bag or tote pattern that you may like to use. You may have noticed that on this canvas I have a line marked. It's a 60-degree angle. I used a ruler I'll line this up for you now. I placed the 60-degree line along the top edge of the fabric and then just drew the mark all the way down. The fabric was starched so it was nice and crisp. Cut in various widths from oh, let's say 1-1/2" to 2-1/2". Various little pieces of the ribbon were sewn sporadically along the lengths. Not in the same positions. We cut these lengths of fabric longer than our base fabric. Longer than the foundation of the cotton canvas. We did this so that we have some leverage of placing the accents of the ribbon. Truth be told when we were working with some of our scraps of fabric we had to piece the strips. We did a little piecing, and covered that with ribbon. That's kind of how the ribbon became part of the design. It's interesting how, while designing you can find ways of working around little problems and making them work to your benefit. In addition to the accent pieces we chose brown to be the highlight throughout the middle. These strips are only 1" wide. Now to work with this, we start with this bias line. Not a true bias but a bias line at a 60-degree line. Place one of the strips at this area. Then sandwich on top of it, a brown strip. Notice that I have lengths coming at the top and bottom. Pay special attention to where this ribbon or accent is going to be placed. After finding where you'd like to place this-- I'm going to do some sewing. Use the edge of your presser foot as the guide. I'm going to get the fabrics lined up again. You're not going to be worried about a specific seam allowance. You're just going to be stitching all the layers to the fabric. I'm using an all-purpose needle, all-purpose thread a "3.0" setting, very common for the length and then you just stitch. We have a lot of extra fabric going off the edge. Maybe at home you can sew a little bit straighter than I just did! Sometimes, when I'm talking I don't always sew the straightest! Then, after you have done the sewing you're going to flip this to the underside covering the seam allowance and press. I'm flipping to the right side. And as I'm pressing this, just press it over. After doing this pressing then you're going to be adding more strips alternating, adding brown after every coloration. On this particular section then I would add my next color being particular where the section of the ribbon falls. I would like it in this area, let's say. So I'd flip it over, match the seam allowance do the same little pressing after the stitching and I would just build on the area. Build on that foundation. When I'm done doing the stitching I would cut out my bag to the size. You could add some button trims to carry through the theme. And you have a very glamorous-looking bag! I like to shop in boutiques, and more likely than not the first thing I notice is how the designer combines fabrics and details. Donna Fenske, designer of this boutique bag combined faux suede, O-rings and the fabric from a recycled tie. Thrift stores and perhaps the back of a closest are a source of eye-catching accent fabrics. Consider "shopping" for fabric in the most unlikely places to create the next "Easy Sew Bag." Start with a tie and then match the tie to some interesting fabric. We used, as I mentioned, some faux suede. You can see the tie fabric even as part of the closure for this quick bag plus the inner accents of the handle. Here's the outside of the handle and the inner accents. Just a little accent goes a long way. Use your favorite bag pattern. Determine where you'd like the accents and then I'll show you how to recycle this tie. Ties go in and out of fashion the fabrics used, the styles, the widths. So save those, if you'd like. Take them apart from the underside. Remove the tie interfacing and cut out this lining section. Press it flat. Wash it if needed, hand wash, that would be. Press it flat. Then after pressing it flat as you can see on this sample, then cut the strips. This is already on the bias. You cut lengthwise strips and end up with bias strips. It seems quite the contrary to normal situations but that happens in this instance. Depending upon the width of your fabric you could get from, oh let's say five to seven yards of trim depending on the width of the strips you cut. To make our boutique bag, we used perforated interfacing that is used for strap handles, to make our trim. Here's the narrower width, and here's the wider width fused to the back of some tie fabric. This is the fabric that I'm going to be using to create this next boutique bag. We simply folded the boutique trimming along the perforated edge, and then we do some stitching. Perfectly even widths. This is going to be placed on this silk fabric. Now speaking of the silk fabric I'd like to show you how we back it. If you were with us during the first program of this series you know that we used dressmaker fabric. Then to give it support, we used polyester fleece and backed it with canvas, as well. Three layers of fabric to give it enough stability to be suitable for a handbag. We have all those layers on the fabric and then we would just position our trim. The tie trim is positioned in this area. You have to do a little auditioning of where you'd like this to be placed on the bag. Now if we take a look back to our finished boutique bag we had some accents on the inside. We used this very narrow trim of a strap. It has about 3/4" of trim on the strap. To create this, we used the perforated interfacing fold it in half and then cut narrow strips of the extra tie fabric. Since this is very slippery we made kind of faux bias tape by folding it in half meeting the wrong sides meeting the middle of the cut edges to the middle of the strap, and stitching down the middle. Then fold it to the side to cover the other cut edge. And topstitch. You have this tiny accent added on the inside. If you'd like, you can use portions of the tie as is. We added a magnetic snap as a closure. With accents of ties as a closure, band and strap we have a perfect boutique bag. When carrying a handbag, you might think of the straps as a purely functional part of the accessory. In this "Easy Sew" variation, you can see that the straps take on an entirely new position by playing an accent role. In this bag variation that I call well connected the straps and the O-rings serve both function and style. It's really easy to work with adding some straps and O-rings but you have to know a little bit about proportion to do this. I'm going to review them, and also how to combine fabrics. I'm working with upholstery fabric readily available at fabric stores and then some faux leather or suede accents. When this pattern was designed this was one of the styles that was created from it. A very simple tote pattern style. Obviously, not a lot of accents. The straps were inserted in the top seam. Well, now we have the straps topstitched on and then a lot of hardware added to give it some different personality. Cut an extra strap width, a 2" crosswise strip of fabric. We like to use the perforated interfacing to create straps. So after you partially fuse this on fold it along the perforation. If I hadn't used faux vinyl or faux leather then I would press it. But since this is difficult to press I like to stitch along the folds. Just edgestitch it, equal distance along the folds to keep these in place. Later on, when you're creating the straps you're going to back the straps, as you'll see later with ribbon. But this time, to add the accents to the front of the bag you're simply going to use the strap as is. Upholstery fabric needs just a little bit of foundation or stability. In this particular style, we fused-on interfacing a medium weight interfacing just to give it a little bit more support. The straps will be marked on your pattern whether it's a tissue pattern or template pattern. On this particular template pattern here's the strap marking. Generally, you just mark it at the very top of the bag. This time, I would like you to transfer the strap marking along all positions for the strap. I've darkened this quite a bit for you to see but you would mark it down the front of the bag. You do it on all four areas. This is the second step. We're just going to work here right now. At this point, use some of the extra O-rings and position, kind of eyeball where you would like to position that first O-ring and maybe the second O-ring. It's totally up to you. I recommend not going exactly in half but positioning it maybe a third of the way up or a third of the way down. Since this bag has been partially sewn to figure out where-- so you can see where the bottom base of the bag will be it's easier just to hold it in its finished position and then do some positioning just eyeballing where you'd like these straps to come. Fold under the seam allowances. Our guest in the past, Lorraine Torrence has said, "Make visual decisions visually." So just place it where you'd like it to be. There's nothing very scientific about this next part. You're just going to cut strapping a little bit longer than you need. Cut the strapping longer than needed and wrap the strapping around the end of the O-ring. Turn up a hem 1/4", or 1/2", whatever you'd like and "baste" it onto your bag with double sided basting tape. It's kind of hard to pin so just use those markings and position it. You would not have to mark markings this dark. I have it darker so that you can see it and you can see how it's aligned. Here's a close-up of topstitching the strap to the bag. Notice that I have the needle in the right position all the way to the right so it's easier to get close to stitching the O-ring. Next to the O-ring, I'm positioning it. I have the next connector to make. I have already determined the length of this so I will simply just cut a little section here put the next O-ring on and you'd use some extra basting tape. A lot of this is just positioning taping it down with double-sided tape. It would difficult to pin this. That's why I like to use that tape. You can simply sew through it. Then, again, topstitch using a short to medium stitch length. You can see how quickly that can be accomplished. Our finished bag also has some accents on the tab. This again is a visual decision that you'll have to make determining where you'd like to sew the extra O-rings. When designing the first bag I simply made the tab. Before it was sewn to the bag, I positioned it. Let me get the snap into place. Then I sewed two O-rings to the end of one strap. Then I determined where I'd like to place them where I'd like it to end or fall. After I determined this, I'd fold this under and then topstitch into place just a little bit beyond the seam allowance. To finish this bag the last step to do is to create the actual straps. To cover up those raw edges simply cover it with ribbon, 3/4", 5/8" or one-inch-wide ribbon and you have a very well connected Bag. Create a personalized shower gift for the bride-to-be by sewing a bag for that very special day. This bag is easy to create with the use of a sheer and coordinating fabric. If you have vintage lace in your fabric collection this would be an ideal place to combine something old with something new! I have made several bags for brides and have made them much smaller. But I found out after the fact that they would have appreciated it just a little bit larger. So we used this crescent shaped bag. You could also give it with a sewing kit inside just in case you need to have a hem hand stitched or add a button. What a lovely gift bag. Perhaps it could be used for another formal occasion. We've used subtle shading. We have lace. We have organza and crepe fabric along with some backing fabric. Throughout this series-- Now, this is the eighth bag out of the 12 bags. We've made sure that each of the fabrics had foundation or were based with foundation. It is so important to have lots of layers. With the layers that we have in this particular bag and we've used high contrast for the samples. We have a sheer, like organza or organdy followed by a crepe fabric. Then we have some fleece, some polyester fleece. So those three layers are treated as one. You could baste around the edges after you've pinned them so that they are easy to handle. Now, the lace. You can spend a lot of money on lace. You can use inexpensive lace. Regardless of the quality all laces are created in the same type of manner. You just cut basic motifs or appliqus. It isn't going to harm your lace by just cutting around the mesh or the netting. It's interlocked, the lace is interlocked. If your fabric is tone on tone, like our finished bag you don't even have to trim close to get rid of all the netting that goes around. You just trim around the edges. This is not going to ravel because of the construction of the various laces. After you have cut the lace, then you can position it. I have a couple of ways I like to position it on the bag. Now, granted, this is high contrast for you to see. I wouldn't recommend this color combination. You can pin it together. Or, I really like just a plain paper glue stick. Just a little dab to position it on the sheer. You can see how easily that sticks. It will dry clear, and you don't have to worry. Sewing through it will not gum up your needle. It's just a great pinning tool. You're going to appliqu this around. Basically zigzag around it with a big zigzag not a very tight one. Because the lace does not ravel you don't have to worry about having such a tight stitch. I have my machine set for a zigzag stitch setting it with a number "2" length and a number "2.5" width. You can just test it to see how you'd like to sew this. Stop with the needle in the down position. Just generally go around the edges. I'm going to stop with the needle in the far right position. This is not difficult. It looks a little bit more difficult than it is just because you're working with beautiful fabrics. Just continue to zigzag around all this area. You can see this is a fast sewing technique. Just zigzag around the edges. I'm going to show you the finished bag and some of the other areas where we've added lace. That simple zigzag stitch is all around the edges of these two motifs. We also added the lace as part of the tab closure and even a silhouette of the lace. Then a little touch of the lace on the inside strap. Subtle, but elegant for the very special day. Today, during my "Nancy's Corner" segment of the show hear an inspirational story of teaching sewing and quilting to those who are blind. Kim Deneault appeared on Sewing with Nancy several programs ago. She showed us how she teaches sewing to young kids. Your idea works for both sighted and unsighted. Yes, because it's very tactile. If you were with us during the first show you saw us work with this pillow. It was designed from children's artwork. You can take a simple drawing. This is a construction paper penguin. You just trace the design onto a tracing paper. Use a dark line so it's easy to follow. You layer your layers of fabrics. Layer the orange, black, and white on top of each other. Put the drawing on top and staple through the paper and all three layers of fabric. Stapling! It's a great idea for kids. That way, they don't get poked with a pin. Then you had them stitch. It can be a little inaccurate around all of the markings. You can be off the line quite a bit. It can be crooked and it's not going to matter. You showed us how to trim away one or two layers depending upon what you wanted to show. That's why it doesn't matter if your line is crooked because you use gummy worms to measure with! You put the worm along the edge and you leave enough fabric there for the worm to crawl along the edge and cut away everything else. After washing and drying, you get a raggedy edge. It puffs up like this so you can easily feel a division between the colors. It's a fun way to do sewing. With that in mind when your neighbor came to you to ask if you could help teach an unsighted person to do this you did a little research. She was a Home Ec teacher teaching eighth graders. One of the students was blind. I didn't know how we were going to teach him but we'd figure it out." Through research, I found this textured color paper. Each color has a texture with it. There's a Braille guide that comes with it. Orange has little squares. Yellow feels like dots. Brown is really rough. So you can start to design with color by touch. You mentioned that your student was elated when he could touch green. You know, to put a feel with the color association. Trying to explain color through sight is impossible so color by touch I mean, he was just so excited. He wanted to get started right away. You designed this floral pattern. It's a little bit different than just tracing, as we used before. Yes, I took one of my patterns and interpreted it with this textured paper. In a coloring book there's a dark line around the drawing. This white line is like that dark line There's nothing there. It's just a little space. Yes, because it gives your fingers a resting point. You come across the purple then you can feel the change to another color. It's like the dark line in a coloring book. I wish you all could feel this. There's quite a difference between the colors. You traced it and you guided him. Yeah, I put it onto a pillow then. He could come from the Braille guide to this paper and then come over to the pillow. Instead of the pillow feeling like one piece of fabric he could now feel that there was a design for a leaf and that was one color. The flower petals were another color. He could actually feel the design. This is great. This wasn't his first project. Well, no, he went on to design something for himself, his mother his interpreter, and the PE teacher. He just went crazy designing his own designs. One time he put many shapes together and after it came out of the dryer... It looked like an angel. It still gives me goose bumps because I took it to school just to see what other people thought. They thought it looked like an angel, too. He's never seen a picture of an angel. Oh, touching. Kim you've developed a Web site so others can work with people who are blind and teach them to sew. Yes,

it's called

handsonquiltshow.org That's a clever name, because most quilt shows people have to wear white gloves. The people in the white gloves touch the quilts so your hands don't touch it. But here, you want the people to touch. Right, they have to be able to feel the texture guide and then actually feel the design on the fabric. This is an inspiring process. Not only are you teaching young kids to sew and quilt but people who would normally not be able to sew or quilt and appreciate color. Good job. Thank you. And thank you for joining us on Sewing with Nancy. We hope to see you back another time. Bye for now. Nancy has written a fully-illustrated book entitled 12 Easy Sew Bags which includes all the information from this three-part series. It's $14.99, plus shipping and handling. To order the book call 1-800-336-8373

or visit our Web site at

sewingwithnancy.com/2301 Order Item No. BK2301 12 Easy Sew Bags. Credit Card orders only. To pay by check or money order, call for details. Visit Nancy's Web site for more information on this program. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman is made possible by Baby Lock; Madeira Threads; Koala Cabinets; Clover; Amazing Designs and Klass Needles. Closed captioning funding provided by Rowenta. Sewing with Nancy is a co-production of Nancy Zieman Productions and Wisconsin Public Television.