Hello! After more than five weeks of procrastinating I am diving into writing a blog post. Bloggers Block developed alongside the overwhelm of a to-do list full of BIG tasks. None of them particularly onerous just each one time-consuming and pretty much impossible to complete in a single sitting/standing. I know we are supposed to break down tasks into manageable mini-goals but there were just too many for my head to deal with…

Anyhow! Here I am! Not so much busting the dam as welling-up a spring – small beginnings 🙂

I’ve been on a sewing course! I enrolled on the rucksack making weekend run by Anna at The Eternal Maker. A good excuse for me and DH to have a weekend away on the South Coast. We stayed in a pleasant AirBNB a few minutes walk from the sea and treated ourselves to meals out in the evenings including fish and chips – it would be unthinkable to go to the seaside and not keep up that particular British tradition!

The course was great. The upstairs sewing studio in the modern barn-style building was flooded with natural daylight. Anna gave us all confidence in the bag making process. It was truly remarkable the way she kept track of each member of the class – each of us making a variation of the pattern and all using different materials. The pattern we used was the ‘Making Backpack’ by Noodlehead. It’s a great pattern but I would have really struggled to follow it without Anna’s guidance as I was using new-to-me fabrics and this was the first time I’d encountered a Noodlehead pattern.

I choose to make the regular size Making Backpack (which is pretty large) using Softshell fabric for the outer, quilting weight cotton for the lining and foam stabilizer to make it a fairly rigid bag. I knew all those layers would be a challenge but it’s good to try new things isn’t it, especially when there’s an expert on hand.

The Softshell was easy to stitch. It doesn’t crease which made some steps in the pattern less straightforward than they might have been. I choose to make the version of the Backpack with the ‘alternate pocket’ but I didn’t add the zipper cover as the softshell wouldn’t have lain flat over the zip. Having the rainbow zipper visible actually makes a fun feature on the Backpack.

I made slow but steady progress over the weekend, learning a lot along the way. Several weeks-on the Backpack remains incomplete as I still need to stitch binding over the exposed seams inside the bag. Another one of those jobs that has just felt too BIG!

I have to applaud the performance of my Janome 5060QDC machine. It kept stitching through many seams of very thick layers of fabrics – I was really impressed!

All the fabrics and bag hardware were purchased from Purple Stitches.

If you are thinking of making your own Making Rucksack and can’t get to Anna’s workshop then I recommend the video tutorial by Jess Oklaroots.

Happy Stitching!

Allison (it’s good to be back!)