Finished Friday | The Rockstar Bag

I’m so excited to share this finish! I have been wanting to make The Rockstar Bag for a while, so I made sure it was one of the first few bags on my list to make in 2016.

My daughter, Callie, wanted a bag so I told her this one was for her. I had her look through my fabric stash and choose the prints. She said she loves text prints, and chose the Graffiti print in black from Our Town designed by Michelle D’Amore for Contempo Studio/Benartex. She chose to stay with the text fabric theme with the lining and chose Sunprint Text in white by Alison Glass for Andover. I suggested that maybe we could have the exterior pocket flap be an accent fabric and pulled out the Edgar print from Nevermore designed by Gillian Fullard/London Portfolio for Michael Miller. She loved the idea of the quill, calligraphy pen and ink pot complementing the script text on the main fabric. I also suggested that we could use the new Glitter Mirror Canvas in white I had purchased from MiKri World Supplies. She said she’s not a big fan of bling, but that the glitter would be understated enough as accents that it would actually compliment the bag. I agreed. I also omitted the rivets on the exterior pocket flap as she repeatedly reminded me that she didn’t “like all the bling, Mom!”. She said she would never use a shoulder strap either, so I omitted that from this pattern as well.

I would classify this as an intermediate to advanced pattern. It comes together easily, but the parts I struggled with most were sewing around the tight corners on the sides of the bags. It wasn’t difficult, but definitely required slower sewing. After putting the binding on the inside seams and turning the bag right side out, I realized that I did not sew as close to the piping as I would have liked. I turned the bag inside out again, used my tiny zipper foot and tried to get as close as possible. That ended up giving me an inside seam of over 5/8″ in some areas. I’m not sure why my piping stuck out so far, but next time I’ll reduce the width of the fabric I use to wrap my cord to make the piping. That should bring the piping closer to the seam.

I chose to add some sturdiness to the bottom of the bag by adding some Glitter Mirror Vinyl Canvas over the main print. I like the look of adding contrasting bottoms to bags, and I think it shows the purse feet off nicely. Although it is white, any dirt should wipe off of the vinyl easily. Unfortunately, my repeated turnings of the bag ended up wrinkling the bottom. I am not too worried about it since it is on the bottom!

All of the hardware labels are from Emmaline Bags. The d-rings I used are bigger than they should be, so the next bag I make I will be sure to order the right size. Oops! Hopefully it won’t bother my daughter to see the oversized d-rings as much as it bothers me to see them.

Callie did not want a lot of extra pockets. She told me she would hardly use them. So the only pockets she has are the exterior pocket, the zippered flap of the exterior pocket and the inside zip pocket. I offered to add a slip pocket for her cell phone, but she said no. The exterior pocket and flap both had Annie’s Soft & Stable interfaced to one side. I didn’t like how thick that made the pocket feel so next time I will use some fusible fleece.

All in all, I really liked making this bag. I learned a new technique (binding the seam allowances inside), and discovered that I have a lot of work to do to get my piping to look nice. The next time I make this bag I would like to try doing a drop-in lining. We’ll see how that goes!

Linking up with TGIFF hosted by Laura (and Scarlett!) over at Quokka Quilts
and with Can I Get A Whoop Whoop over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

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