Wilting with Lauren

A little while back my friend Lauren pinned on Pinterest a mini pocket book and wrote “weekend with Jen”. I looked at the pattern and replied “Why not? When?” I looked at the pattern and knew we would be able to do it no problem – even my friend who doesn’t have much experience (if at all), sewing. Some time a couple weeks ago we were out for coffee and I was telling her about my Quilt till you Wilt weekend and asked when we wanted to get together to make the pocketbook – after all they were heading to New Zealand very soon and she wanted it to store her passport. We found a date that actually worked and put it in the schedule – Lauren called it Wilting with Jen. Which made me laugh. Since then every time we talked about it, we called it simply WILTING.

I met Lauren on Friday at one of the local fabric stores. I took her to one of the biggest, but the one with the best selection of home decor and canvas type material for the outside of our pocketbook. I think Lauren was a touch overwhelmed with all of the bolts everywhere – her face dropped.

We spent a bit of time wandering through the shelves trying to find something that would be good for the outside of the pocketbook. I found a great stripe and so did Lauren – though it proved to be tricky to match a lining to.

We tried everything as the lining from solids to polka dots to some very tacky mallard fabric. At that point even the Elvis fabric looked good. So we went back to find another exterior fabric and had much more success.

With our fabric cut, buttons found, and dinner in our stomach we were ready to go.

We started at the very beginning with our cutting. I didn’t realize that Lauren was left handed and I only had a left handed rotary cutter. Lauren was a trooper though and learned to cut right handed and did a pretty good job – no pictures of that though – I was nervous that the flash would cause a slip.

She made a belt out of the outside fabric to enhance her wilting look.

Once cut and pressed it was time to teach her the machine.

I walked her through the workings of my smaller machine – Jemie. And she let the pedal go and was off to the races. Now when I say she let the pedal go – I mean she went at a very conservative slow pace – but it worked great for her and her stitches were nice and even. Better yet – look at her smiling face, she looks like she is having a gas.

Then we started her project and she got her game face on and focussed like all good sewist do.

Though at this moment she is trying to sew through 7 layers of fabric so she was making sure she didn’t have to use my little friend (pictured beside her – the seam ripper).

She did such a great job – though I am worried she stayed in a hunched position for too long.

I put her through the ringer too. I made her hand sew a button, mark a centre line and sew right along it, sew through 8 layers of fabric, baste fabric and pull out the stitches.