Sophia's Backpack

 

I've been wanting to make my daughter one of these backpacks for several years. I've had the fabric and hardware, but just didn't take the time to do it. Finally, I planned on making Damian's Travel Bag and Sophia's backpack for this past Christmas, but I didn't get either of them finished on time. Well, finally both of them are finished! 
If you've been following my blog, you've seen this backpack pattern before. It's the Sew Sturdy Essential Backpack pattern, found on the Craftsy platform. You can buy the class or just the pattern. I've used it twice before: first for my grandson, and second as an insulated backpack for carrying lunches. Now, it was finally my daughter's turn. 
I do like the final product when I make bags, and a lot of the process, but putting it all together makes me wonder why I continue to make bags. Such a lot of hassle stitching through the multiple layers - I still can't comprehend how people make bags using heavier materials, like upholstery fabric or vinyl. Nevertheless, it's finished. And my daughter has already made a request for a sewing machine cover, so I'm not escaping bag-making yet (though technically, that will not be a bag). 
And I'm continuing my bread making adventures.

I made the cottage loaf, which made for a very interesting presentation. Not a bad bread, but interesting as to how one actually eats a loaf like this.

I also made the Split Tin loaf, though my split filled in rather quickly and is not as pronounced as the picture in the book. Both of these breads are from the British Breads section in The World Encyclopedia of Bread and Bread Making. 

And finally, I made the Naturally Leavened Sourdough Bread. It, too, turned out fine, though I have yet to figure out the best storage option for my bread. It gets rather hard in the fridge, but I don't generally eat it quickly enough to keep it from getting moldy outside of the fridge. Perhaps I should consider cutting loaves in half and freezing half. 
And that leads me to my freezers, which are overly full. I did get the smaller one defrosted and a little better organized. I have three bags of UFOs (unidentified frozen objects) and "use soon" items. My plan is to take out one or two items out at a time, determine what they are and decide whether to use them or compost them. I took out one unlabelled container and it turned out to be pizza sauce. I managed to use up my sourdough starter discard and made 3 batches of pizzas. That's 3 - 10" pizzas per recipe. I actually staggered my starting time for each recipe, so that I wouldn't have to be making all 9 pizzas at once, especially since I only have 3 - 10" pizza pans. But somehow, even though I started each recipe an hour after the previous one, they managed to catch up with each other. However, I got them all made, and into the freezer. 

Vegan pastrami, green peppers and pineapple

I made a huge batch of veggie cheese sauce that I figured would be enough for all 9 pizzas. But it was quite thick, and not very spreadable, so it only lasted for the first two batches. 

broccoli, vegan pepperoni and red onion

Next time I use that particular recipe, I think I may try adding more liquid. Fortunately, I did have some commercial vegan cheese shreds in the freezer, so I was able to use that for my final batch of pizzas. 

garlic soy chunks, garlic and olives

By the time it came to this last batch, I had run out of space on my cooling racks, and these pizzas were placed on the back of a large cookie sheet. 
And the pizzas have already come in handy when I failed to plan ahead and/or ran out of energy by mealtime.
I also found a pie crust and enough cooked sweet potato in the freezer to make a sweet potato pecan pie for Easter. 

I wanted to try something different for an entree, so I did an internet search for vegan Easter recipes and found a recipe for Lentil Wellington. I was planning on purchasing puff pastry and the website for my local grocery store said that they had it in stock, but after searching every freezer, I had to give up and decide on an alternate. 

I made it into a pie instead. I used a whole wheat pie crust recipe that I hadn't tried before and it was too crumbly. It was still tasty, and so was the filling, but it barely stayed together. 

And of course, I made hot cross buns. Originally, I was going to use a recipe from the King Arthur Baking website, but it called for both yeast and baking powder. That just seemed really weird to me. So, I pulled out my old Purity cookbook and modified their recipe. I made them out of white whole wheat flour and substituted mixed dried fruit for the candied peel (which I find disgusting). They turned out quite nice, but I've got to stop making such large recipes, especially when there's no room in the freezers. And they do tend to get dry and hard in the fridge. 

Thread Choices and Bag Progress

 

After trimming the front and back and rounding the corners on the Ultimate Travel Bag, I was rummaging through the pieces to find what came next when I realized I still hadn't done the bag stabilizer sleeve. When was that supposed to be sewn in? I had the impression that it needed to be done after the buttons, but so much time had elapsed since I paused the project in order to purchase buttons that once I got the buttons sewn on, I just skipped to the next stage without watching that whole video. I didn't figure I needed to watch the instructor sew on buttons by machine when I intended to sew them on by hand, and I had forgotten about the sleeve. Fortunately, I hadn't started putting the bag together, aside from the side and zipper strips. So it was still workable to fit the sleeve in. When I made my grandson's laptop carrier bag, the stabilizer sleeve was separate, sewn as a wide tube into which was inserted the stabilizer, and it was then put into the bottom of the bag. But this one is just one side sewn - not a tube - into the bottom of the bag and the stabilizer is to be inserted once the bag is finished. I'm waiting to see how that turns out. And my stabilizer choice is different this time as well. The pattern recommends plexiglass, foam core board or heavy cardboard, as it did for the laptop bag. And I really didn't like any of those options. Plexiglass seems too rigid and heavy - not to mention expensive (not that bag making is cheap). And I also had concerns about how sharp the edges might be and whether it would wear through the fabric. And the other options just didn't seem very durable to me. I opted instead to use plastic canvas. I was going to use that again for the travel bag, but opted instead to try the foam core board. We'll see how that goes. If Damian decides he doesn't like it, I can always replace it with plastic canvas. Personally, I've never worked with foam core board before. 
But back to the sleeve - it had to be finished with a ¼" folded hem on each end, and then stitched into the bottom of the bag with a ⅛' seam along both sides. Since the zipper strip was already in place, I skipped placement markings and just centred it between where I had attached the pockets. When I attempted to sew down the hems, I had the regular needle plate on my machine (I was using the Janome 8200, so I didn't have to change the thread and bobbin on the 6000 - that's one of the advantages of having more than one sewing machine), and the hem ended up forced down through the hole and got stuck there. I wasn't sure what was holding it there, but I couldn't get it out. I opened the bobbin compartment, removed the bobbin and snipped the bobbin thread. That didn't help. Then I snipped the upper thread, also didn't help. I removed the bobbin case, then the insert that fits around the machine in its table and then popped off the needle plate. I then had a needle plate attached to the stabilizer sleeve. I had to pick out some threads in order to release the bunched fabric and was finally able to remove the needle plate from the stabilizer sleeve. And then I switched to the straight stitch needle plate and finished the hems. I then switched the bobbin thread to black to coordinate with the outside fabric and completed the ⅛" seams. I'm beginning to feel that this bag has created just too many adventures. 

And on the subject of thread, I have 3 different-coloured threads that I'm using with this project (plus a couple that I used on the longarm). 

The two large cones on the left are the threads I used on the longarm: Bright Gold in the bobbin and Aqua on top. The others are used on the sewing machines.

And I have bobbins in each colour as well, so that the thread matches whatever colour fabric it will show on. And that means that I have often been sewing with different colours on top and in the bobbin. And I've been constantly switching back and forth, depending on what part of the project I'm working on. But since I do have several machines, I don't know why I don't just leave one colour in each of three machines and just switch the bobbins when necessary. However, the end is in sight, and I don't think I'll need to use the gold thread any more. 
I got the bias binding cut into strips, but I've run out of steam, so it can wait for another day to get stitched together. I opted to use 2½" strips as I've used 2¼" bias binding on bags before and it was really a stretch to wrap it around all of that bulk in the seams. I also will be pressing my binding. While the instructor recommends pinning it because she says that pressing it gives her wrinkles and creases that she doesn't like, I have not found this to be the case and I have found pinning my binding for previous bag projects from the same instructor to be cumbersome and annoying. Not to mention the fact that any time I use pins, I can pretty much guarantee that I will get poked. And I also tried using my quilt clips on the binding instead of pins and that gets pretty heavy... Besides most of this binding will be on the inside of the bag, so what's a few wrinkles and creases where no one sees them, even if they actually did happen?