Amy Butler Style Stitches Sew Along

The 2nd half of 2010, I kinda felt I hit a plateau in my sewing. When I started teaching myself to make bags, I only learnt to make 2 basic items - a zip pouch and a drawstring pouch. Based on these 2 models, I experimented with other combinations and each time I tried something new, I felt such a rush. But the last few months, mainly due to my commitment to too many craft markets, I made mostly items which could sell. That meant I made items I had made before - the variety only came in the fabric or small nips and tucks. I think if I were to carry on like this, it would surely kill my passion for bag-making.

This year, I decided I would make a wider variety of bags and try techniques I would not normally use. But I'm realistic enough to know I'm not that creative to be able to come up with a large variety of bags to experiment with. I had experience with store-bought bag patterns in my early bag-making days and the icky thing is the patterns are printed on very thin paper.  And the paper sticks to you. Plus, I can't make head or tail of the instructions. It's worse than reading Chinese! But surely the most horrid part is each bag usually comes in a million pieces of templates. Yes, yes, I'm exaggerating.

So I'm participating in Amy Butler Style Stitches Sew Along. What attracted me was the book which had all these fab bags made in Amy Butler fabric. Plus it's in English!

Today the book finally arrived from Amazon. Me hubs bought it for me. If it were up to me, I would go to Borders. I guess I'm still feeling stung over the Sashiko embroidery thread which never arrived and not getting any refund.

Anyhoo, this Sew-Along is hosted by Bree of My Crafty Crap. The first bag I will make is the one on the cover - The Cosmo Bag. I haven't started. I just got the book! The idea is to make 1 bag a month. So I guess you'll be seeing 12 new bags this year.