One Yard Wonders begin!

Here is the first project I attempted out of the highly anticipated book, One Yard Wonders. It's called the Folklore Bag. I love the design. In fact, I've been eyeing a bag almost identical to it on Etsy since before Christmas. I nearly bought it for myself 43 times. But, I never did. Go check it out... Pretty similar, right?!

I guess I just learned how to save myself $48. However, I will continue to turn to her Etsy shop for inspiration on how to interpret this Folklore pattern.

The bag is bigger than I thought it was going to be, and bigger than the picture makes it look. If you line the bag with a contrasting fabric, this takes way less than one yard of your exterior fabric.

The pattern does call for a magnetic snap. I didn't have any, and didn't feel like waiting a week to get one to sew the pattern up. The addition of one will be lovely, but I think the bag works as is as well. However, if you want to order yourself some magnetic snaps to have ready when you make your Folklore bag, go here.

I wouldn't exactly call this a simple project. It definitely has it's set of challenges. I went online trying to find reviews of the pattern when I got to the point where you are supposed to attach the top bands. The instructions could have benefitted from a few more picture or illustration. And online I discovered that I was not the only one feeling that way about this step. In the end, I didn't follow the directions in the book. I did it the more intuitive way. It will make sense when you get to that point. But the bag was completed after a few hours of work, and can now be sent off to hopefully make one lovely friend very happy on her birthday!

I did discover along the way, that on Facebook there is a group called "One Yard Wonders", which I became a fan of. It looks like a great forum to go to when working with this book to find what other people are making, where they are blogging about it, and errors that people are discovering, etc. So here's a link to that too.

Seriously, technology is amazing. First of all amazing sewing books are getting published, with full pattern pieces. And secondly, online communities are instantly available for further information and learning to go in sync with the book you just bought. If that's not exciting, I don't know what is!!

Except that I've already started the "toddler pinafore smock top" ( on pg. 188) and because I just can't seem to help myself, I found the need to make a few additions to the already lovely pattern as it was. Therefore, it's not finished yet. Stay tuned for another update once my ladies wake up and can model the pinafore for me...