What a little pouch taught me

Hello dear readers,

If you're a regular reader you'll know my stand on raw seams. In fact I made raw seams my enemy No. 1 and would scoff at bags made with raw seams showing. You could say I'm a finished seam snob.

Well, this week I unexpectedly gave myself a little challenge. Which is to turn a coaster into a coin pouch. You understand that I have not stepped out of my comfort zone when it comes to sewing for a very long time. I make bags one way and one way only - with finished seams.

But with this little coaster-pouch, unless I take the whole thing apart which meant removing the binding, I couldn't possibly turn it into a zip pouch doing it my regular way. I could of course leave it as a coaster but my flaw is I rarely back down from a bag challenge. So I did the unthinkable. I handsewed the zipper onto the coaster.

Inside the lining, the raw seams on the zipper are visible (horrors) if you look closely. Many times, I wanted to ditch the whole project because I felt I was not being true to my handmaking principles.

After I sewed the bottom together, I look at this baby and I see how I've been living under a rock all these while. I doubt if I could ever make this pouch the finished seam way. It got me thinking. When I became intolerant of other methods of making a bag, I cut myself off so many possibilities. Many times I have wanted to try this or that shape just to see how it would turn out. But the one and only method I sew with always stood in the way. Like if I couldn't achieve a finished seam look, I would not make it. It was always the "finished seam" way or no way.

I feel like I have been reborn. Just like after a migraine attack you believe you can do anything except this is a sewing re-birth. Am I starting to sound silly? I do believe I am experiencing a maturity in my sewing mindset.

It is so apt that right after my rebirth, I dove straight into finishing a "difficult" bag that I had been trying to make. I had this amount of leftover Ikea fabric and thought this was the perfect bag for it. hahaha.

I started making this bag last week but I put it on hold as it was killing me trying to hide all the seams. In fact, I put it aside thinking it may never be completed.

But in the end, it all came together beautifully and I made it the finished seam way. Not that I'm not happy with the bag. I am. I love the result. But I'm no longer so in love with techniques and clever ways of making stuff. Making bags is meant to be fun for me. If I have to agonise over it, I think I've lost my way.

In view of my new-found tolerance, I'd like to mention that today is Cook A Pot Of Curry Day in Singapore.

In Singapore, most folks live in flats in areas which are densely populated. Living at such close proximity, it is no surprise when differences occur. Last Monday, a report in the local papers was on the high number of neighbour disputes and how a Community Mediation Centre (CMC) played its part in helping settle disputes. A CMC mediator quoted an example of a dispute between a family from China and a local Indian family.

The dispute was the foreigners from China objected to the local family cooking curry due to the smell. After mediation, the Indian family agreed to cook curry only when the Chinese family were not home.

I guess you can imagine the outcry that resulted. With Singapore becoming so uncomfortably crowded due to increasing number of foreigners, it is very easy to point fingers at the foreigners. Plus throw in 5 cents worth of opinion from every Tom, Dick and Harry and this controversy could easily have gone out of hand. It is also unfortunate that curry is the dish of dispute because Singaporeans LOVE curry.

Fortunately Singaporeans are rational beings. Also, I believe most Singaporeans aren't anti-foreigners. And this is how Cook A Pot Of Curry Day came about. Someone started it and it went viral. This day is a positive outcome of something negative. I don't see it as a protest but as a stand about tolerance of differences.

And in view of my new-found freedom from raw seams snobbishness, today when I have my curry, I will toast to future projects with raw seams, bias binding seams, french seams, in fact any kind of seams.