Sewing So Much

Next weekend is the Santa Shop, which is the time of year that I sell my jams & jellies at a local church. This will be my fourth time going. Last year was not too good in terms of sales. I'm hoping the economy is making a come back & I'll sell out this year (like I did my first year). For the first time ever, I'm adding a new product at my table...hand sewn purses. I bought the material several months ago from an auction at work. I've been dawdling & not getting any sewing done lately, so this past weekend, I finally had to buckle down & get it done.

I started sewing around 11am on Saturday morning. Luckily, the previous weekend, I had cut out the patterns for 25 purses. So all I had to do was sew the liners, interior pockets, outer layer, snaps and handles. I say "all I had to do" as if it was easy breezy. I found out really quickly that the thinner & slippery-er the fabric, the easier it was to sew. If the fabric was more like leather, then the stitching jammed up and looked like a pile of mess on the fabric. It didn't matter if I turned the tension to 0 or 9 or anywhere in between. My machine is not made for leather. It almost made me start cussing. But I managed to get a few purses sewn together out of the difficult fabric & then moved on to the easier fabrics. Vince only had to get his pliers out once to fix the foot on the machine that the tough fabric had snapped off.

Around 9:30pm, I finally stopped sewing for the night. I had done all the pockets, inside liners, and outer parts. And I had sewn them all together. On Sunday, I started around 2pm with the handles & snaps. All the snaps are hand stitched so it was a tedious process. By 10pm, I had only 6 purses left to put snaps in. The rest are completely done. Whew! My back was so tired of leaning over a machine & my fingers were tired of being poked with a needle. I tried to use the thimble (& did several times when working with the leather material), but it mostly just gets in my way.

I have lots of them that look great. Several that look a bit wonky & one or two that I don't think I will be selling. Who knows if anyone will actually buy these. My mother-in-law did purchase one from me yesterday, so I've at least sold one! I started thinking about my presentation of the table at the booth next Saturday & thought about needing some kind of hat rack to hang the purses on. I have 2 small black fold out stools that ended up being a great rack to hang them on. Once I set up my booth with purses, jams, & jellies, I'll take a picture of it to display here.

Another first for me this year is having a friend come & sell her handmade items at my booth, too. Dawn has been knitting hats & such to sell along side me. I hope we both sell out & have a great time! Come join us next Saturday from 9am - 2pm at Poplar Springs Baptist on 417.