amitymamaThe Attachment Parenting Community

Ariadne Umbrell · 08-25-2007, 04:26 AM

Okay, again, no pics. I'll assume you sew, and can fill in the blanks.

First off, obtain nylon fabric, cone(s) of thread, and possibly, scraps of nylon or other non- natural fabric- costume material works great. Obtain a paper bag. Obtain an image about the size of the front of the paper bag. This can be a coloring book page ( best) or something scanned and printed. You need the paper version of this.

Cut out your fabric. Get slightly, or more, larger than the paper bag- why squanch things up? Zigzag around all edges- this stuff ravels like crazy. Cut two of the bottom rectangles. These need not be the same color.

Decide which is the front, and which is the back, of the fabric- nylon has faces. maybe you prefer one texture over the other. Chalk the folding lines, as if it were a bag.

Arrange the image- a somewhat simplified, coarser image works best- not one with fiddly little details-as if it were a quilt applique, for instance. Anyway, arrange the image faceup on the front of the fabric. Now, using a straight stitch, stitch the paper image to the fabric. Check the back to see that all the essential lines have been stitched- noses, and so forth. Now, rip off the paper.

Find your largest background piece. Put it on the front, face up. Pin it, or tape it, in place. Flip the fabric over, to the backside threadtracing. Stitch, with a short and narrow zigzag. Trim. Place the next layer. Flip and stitch, trim. etc etc etc

When you finish, you will have a nicely appliqued image. Now, this is where is goes from nice to great. From the crummy garden flags sold at hallmark, to the fantastic hometeam flags brandished by collegiate athletics.....

Okay, all the layers are there, they look great, you've trimmed all the threads......

Now, set your stitch width as wide as possible. Set your length to a bit below zero, below satin stitch. And begin to trace over your stitch lines. This will be very slow going. At the end, you will have a strong bead of satin stitch over all the lines of fabric, glossy, thick, confident, strong.

Sew the sides, sew to the bottom. you can leave the top zigzagged, or you can fold it over twice, and hem it. Now, edge stitch all the edges and corners 1/8 inch in.

Fold over top a couple of times, and mark where to put Velcro. Zigzag it on.

To give you an example:

I used red nylon for ds1's bag. I traced the Darth Vader mask from the star wars dk book. I traced the helmet, the neck piece,the eyes, and the breathing triangle. I laid on the first black nylon piece, and stitched over all the area to be illustrated- it was the biggest piece. I trimmed it.Then I Laid snakeskin pleather on the helmet area tracing- it was pretty thin- the headpiece- and stitched that down. It covered part of the first black nylon. I trimmed it. It gave a contrast to the initial blackness. Then I turned a piece of black nylon 45 degrees, so it caught the light differently. I stitched that down as the breathing triangle. For the eyes, I sewed down bits of red fabric. I could have cut out the black background, but I liked the shading you could see through. Again, all the pieces were trimmed.

After all this, I did the heavy satin stitch over all the sewing. This went well.

Here, I lost my way- I did a fiddly small "star wars" in yellow, and I didn't trim it well. Now, there's a misshapen "star wars" with yellow threads snaggling out. It looks homemade, and kind of pathetic.

Then, the velcro.When you are through sewing the velcro, tie off the thread, and run it between the fabric and the velcro patch. It looks nicer than stray threads.

For white,- either use two layers of white. or sandwich a layer of sparkly silver nylon between the base color and the white- the light will reflect through, and it will hold it's pristine whiteness.

As you have been careful to tie off all the threads, and run them between fabric layers, and you have done a heavy zigzag---this bag will not ravel, rot or decay, even when left in the bottom of a backpack, and then laundered.

Do not use Fraycheck. It makes some nylons bleed color.

Do not use dual duty- it's too thick, and too expensive.

Do not use cotton- it will fray and fragile at the satin stitch lines.

accept that no one loves this like you, and that you risk them losing it. ( do not ask how I know this)

ari