Hesitant, Hopeful

I took my sewing machine and went to Melanie's yesterday for a sewing party.  We had a really good time!  The idea was to sew together, but for the most part, she just helped me figure out what I was doing while I navigated my first project in more than 15 years.  I am so grateful to have had her help.  Though we had a few technical glitches, like a bobbin that wouldn't behave (pet named "ill luck bobbin"), everything went very smoothly.  I made a bag, a simple project that actually took me about 7 hours to finish.  It's a long time, but the final product came out really good!  So good, in fact, I wanted to share the pics with y'all.

(Please click the images to see them larger!!)

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I hope you enjoyed seeing the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them! I had a really great time working on this bag and will likely make several more of them in different fabrics and colors. I have Melanie to thank for finding the brown fabric with the teal circles, we were looking for fabric when she pointed it out and I loved it the second I saw it. I have enough extra that I'm going to make dice bags out of it.

My next project, as you can imagine, will be dice bags -- going to work on it next Saturday. I got some fabric last night so I could make some, one of which will be for Matt, who chose a gray fabric with skulls on it. I should have known he'd pick something like that. I don't think there are patterns for dice bags, but they're fairly simple, so I'm not concerned. Might hunt around the net for instructions, I don't know yet.

Today, I feel like I got a workout yesterday. It's funny how exhausting sewing is. It's very rewarding, but it's exhausting, too. I'm looking forward to sewing next weekend!!