A day at the Fluff-a-torium

Yesterday in my weekend catch up I mentioned spending a lovely day at the Fluff-a-torium in Dorking. For my birthday present Hubby treated me to one of their sewing days, 'Make a bag in a day'. It was a fabulous day and I learnt lots.  The sewing class was held above the shop so not only was I looking forward to learning to make the bag but to having a good nose around the shop too.

The day was taught by a lovely Lady called Gwyneth.  Her day job is a Radiologist in hospital but her passion is sewing.

Here's a picture of Gyneth arranging all our bags we made.   I'm afraid I had planned to take lots of pictures of the day but it was quite a push to get the bag finished on time and rather then messing around taking pictures I was concentrating on what I was doing.

Once we had all arrived, there was 6 of us in the group, Gwyneth had a chat with us all explaining how the day would go.  We  had a choice of making 1 of 2 bags, either a messenger or a banana bag.  I chose the banana bag as I thought it would be beneficial for me to learn how to sew curves.  We were then all handed our instruction sheet and we headed down to the shop to choose what material we wanted to use for our bags.  The bag is reversible so we need to choose 2 different materials which were all part of the cost of the course (£65) and we could then choose any embelishements or extras we wanted to add to the bag and those we purchased ourselves.

We weren't allowed to take the instructions or pattern home with us, although we did have the option of purchasing more material and cutting it out so that we had all the bits to make another bag and thus would have the pattern too.  I didn't do this, mainly because I ran out of time and I thought one bag would be enough.

This is't a tutorial of how I made the bag, but I wanted to share a few pictures of the process and some tips that I learnt.  You make think 'Der! Kate, how did you not know these things' but I know they seem pretty simple I just hadn't thought about it.

Previously when I have cut out patterns I would pin one piece and cut it out and then pin the 2nd piece etc. But on the day we folded our fabric in half pinned the pattern on and then cut out the pieces.

We repeated this for the lining/inner of the bag and for the interfacing too.

For the strap you need a long piece of material. To make life easier I learnt if you pin that piece to the very edge of the folded side of the fabric, once cut out you ended up with tone long piece of fabric.  Again so simple but easily forgotten.

• Now this may sound silly but correct way to pin fabric.
• How to sew a curved piece of fabric. Bit tricky to explain so I will do a tutorial about this when I make something and have pictures.
• Ideas of how to make a bag that I can use in my own designs in the future.

It was a superb day.  I met some lovely people and learnt a lot.  I'm not sure if any of you watched the recent series Great British Sewing Bee but I take my hats off to the ladies and gents who did it.  Apart from their excellent sewing skills working under all that pressure and having to complete the projects in the allotted time.  I don't know how they did it.  We all kept laughing because we felt the pressure trying to complete our bag before the end of the day!

  I want a craft/sewing room just like the one where the lesson was held.  Here's a couple of pictures of around the room.

Here's a picture of everyone's bags they made (except one as the lady had already left)

If you have a love of sewing and want to learn more, I highly recommend doing a sewing day or course near you.  I absolutely loved it and felt it was so beneficial.

I leave you with a couple more pictures of my bag.  Although it was reversible I will just be using it with the paisley outer fabric so I added a cute little label to the inside.  The spotty fabric will be my lining.

Weekend catch up.

Can you believe we're over half way through May! This year is just whooshing on by.  I suppose since we're getting near to half way through the year I'll have to be reviewing my new year post and the goals I hoped to achieve this year.  Today lets just have a little catch up.

The last week and a half has been pretty busy, which generally seems to be how my life is at the moment.  Last Thursday week my Mum went in for her 2nd knee replacement.  Bless her, its a horrendous operation but she has done really well and was discharged home after 6 days which is much better then last time when she was in for 8 days.  She would of come out on day 5 but they kept her an extra day to make sure her kidney function was improving because one of the tablets she had been taken had affected them.  She is getting there though.

Last Sunday I had a lovely day at the Fluff-a-torium in Dorking and made a lovely bag that I am seriously chuffed with but I'll tell you all about that tomorrow in my 'Crafty side of me' post.

One of my goals this year was to do a Clinical reasoning and physical assessment module in preparation for then doing my nurse prescribing course.  Well I started the course last this week.  So every Wednesday and Thursday for the next 6 weeks I will be on this course.  It's seriously full on and we all felt quite over whelmed by the Thursday afternoon.  It's intense but I really enjoyed it.  I can tell you now, as we get into June I will more then likely getting quite stressed and then in July I'll be having panic attacks because I will have to something called an Oski, where I am assessed doing 2 physical examinations on "pretend" patients! Eek!  Lots of study, revision and practice will be needed.  I am going to have to be super organised.  I don't think Hubby believes me but I am really going to try.  I do suffer with anxiety at times and if I am not organised my anxiety levels (and Hubby's stress levels) will be through the roof!

So that's the fun I've been having this week.  What have you guys been up to? Anything nice?

It's time for some Friday delights!

I survived! Reflections of my first A to Z challenge

Well hello again people! I have had over a week off from blogging after the hectic month of April and participating in the blogging from A to Z April challenge   I can proudly say I survived it.  I have to say there were a couple of touch and go moments where I thought I might just have to give it all up but I couldn't, I had to make sure I stuck with it to the bitter end.

Blogging from A to Z, Z is for zoomania...

Few!!!!! *lets out a humongous sigh as wipes brow*

So we've made it to the last day of the blogging from A to Z April challenge.  As fun as it has been I'm kind of glad it's all over as it's quite a task writing posts for everyday with all the other boring responsibilities of life, working full time, housework (this may have slipped a little in the past month) and Maid of Honor duties of organizing Hen nights.