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Little H.: "Mom, which bag can I use?" - As in: 'I don't have a bag to put my gym stuff in...'
Can you believe this is an ever returning question here? Our place looks like bag-country, or better: it is bag-country, with bags hanging and lying around everywhere!  Most of them where homemade, but I bought quite some over the years as well - the excuse most often being: at that price I can't make it!
Anyway, last Saturday little H. couldn't find a bag to put her aerobics stuff in (did I ever mention she discovered aerobics this year and got totally hooked. Aerobics, well the kind she does, has nothing to do with Jane Fonda nor the eighties. No leg warmers, no hairbands, but a lot of jumping around at very high speed in a choreographic setting. You need a lot of flexibility (which she has to a freaking extent - we have no idea who she got that from) and muscle strength in order to keep up. But I'm so deviating, here, I guess, from today's topic.)

Me: 'You can't find a bag? Would you like me to make you one?' 'Yes, mommy, please!' We were one hour away from her Saturday aerobics class - I guess I felt like sewing...
I went for the grey sweater knit fabric which I got at a discount because there was a hole in it somewhere. But grey is just grey, right? So, I decided to add a nice little detail. I am creative, but not when it comes to adding details. You won't find butterflies or flower appliqués in my designs for the simple reason I'm not good at drawing (and also because I'm simply not a butterfly-flowery person). That's why I stick to squares and circles which are harder to mess up. Here, I didn't get any further than adding the first letter of her name. To get the Abercrombie & Fitch appliqué kind of effect, I used several layers of  fabric - which worked out fine, but for the in between layers, I might as well have used something else than my nicest fabrics since you can't see them - even the smallest child would have known that.  Oh well! With the appliqué we were already more than half an hour down the road and I still needed to fix the lining (dropped the inside pocket - sorry!) and the handles. You guessed it, even though I worked like crazy and kranked up the speed of my sewing machine, I didn't finish the bag in time, so she still had to chose one from her extensive collection ( she chose this one - still a favorite!). But, hey, I finished it right after class and she was as happy as could be. As for me: it's not my best work ever but it was a fun little project for a grey Saturday afternoon.
Oh, the weather... it has been so miserable the passed couple of weeks. It feels like we skipped a couple of seasons with all the rain we had lately but let's not go down that road. Not today!

Note: This bag could easily be made from an old sweater. It's a simple tote like this one - except for the boxed corners and appliquéd handles.