Swimming Bags: Stashbusting Sewalong June 2016

Every week when I walk my daughter to her swimming lessons, I vow to make new swimming bags for both my kids. They have been using the same bags for about 3 years, and they are quite literally falling apart. I finally drew up a design late last year, and in the previous school holidays in April I finally made the pattern for new bags, cut the first one out, and didn't get any further.

The theme for the Stashbusting Sewalong for June was unselfish sewing, and after spending most of the month making my leather jacket, I thought I should make up for my lack of unselfishness, by finishing off these bags. Bag one was actually made in June, and bag two was finished on July 1. Close enough to June I say.

I based my pattern on the bags that the kids had been using. They were from an Emirates flight 3 years ago, and were just big enough for their swimmers, goggles, swimming cap and towel, with a zipped pocket on the front for their swimming membership card.

One of the old swimming bags

I made mine a little larger and a little simpler in style.

The outside pocket has a smaller pocket inside for the membership card, and inside the bag is a small zipped pocket that could be used for loose change. On the outside I put a keyring hook thing, so they could put keyrings or anything else like that on it.

The back of the bag and straps are padded with iron on wadding, and the majority of the pieces are interfaced.

I learnt the hard way that you shouldn't try and overlock 10 layers of fabric (plus wadding, plus interfacing). On the first bag I broke 5 overlocker needles before switching to heavier needles and hand overcasting the really bulky sections.

 

Needless to say, I didn't break any on the second bag. I bound the offending seam instead.

Just because my sewing machine sews through countless layers of fabric like a hot knife gliding through butter, does not mean that my overlocker can do the same thing. You would have thought I'd learnt that lesson years ago when I broke a similar number of overlocker needles on a sequin covered wedding dress!

My stash bust for these was about 1.5m.
Half year stashbusting efforts
In:     10.8m
Out:  20.7m

To meet my stashbusting goal, I need to sew twice as much as I buy during the year, so I'm almost on target.