The Uptown Girl Sew Along – With Ellen – Part Three

OK….so now it’s on to part three of the Uptown Girl Sew Along! WOOHOO let’s finish this! 🙂

Over to you Ellen:

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Well… Sorry, I hope not too many of you have been waiting… My bad … I had a few wedding alterations to get through and then I decided to change my straps for my bag to a plain colour, so I had to make some new ones.

Let’s…  see… we left off at the point of joining the outside shell and the lining. You need to have your outside shell inside out and your lining right side out. Fit the lining down into the outer shell, making sure you have the outer front and inner front together, and the outer back against the inner back. Clear as mud.

Align all corners, centre fronts and centre backs. Make sure all the insides are not sticking up anywhere where you need to sew: pockets or zip tabs. When you have it all lined up nicely and you’re happy with it, then go ahead and seam all the way around.

Now Turning … This is the part I don’t like. From the hole you left in the lining, turn the whole bag out the right way.

Now this is tricky as your Stabilizer inside is only fixed in a few places, you need to stick your hand back in and carefully position your foam so that it’s all sitting up around the top and sitting down around the bottom. I carefully pinned all around the top before top stitching, but it still moved and I had to unpick and go back in and re-position again and redo one section. I wanted to make sure I caught the foam so I top stitched at 10mm. In one of the pics you will see my straps too … however I didn’t use those in the end.

 Straps, I used Grommets with the fold down tabs on the back, to attach my straps. Here’s how I do my grommets.

First I check the position I want them in, then using the back piece as a template I draw a line in on the inside of the template. Then I sew a circle or square through all layers, about 3 or 4 mm outside the drawn line. There are two reasons for this, 1. To use as a guideline for cutting and 2. To stabilize the opening , so it won’t stretch. After this I cut around the drawn line, between the line and stitching, this is normally a perfect fit … well nearly always, maybe a little trim here or there. Try the grommet on for size and when you think you have the opening right, put some glue in the channel of the front piece. Position in place and lay it face down on the table, using a quick unpick I poke all the edges into the channel and onto the glue. Then put on your back piece, I fold the prongs partially in and check from the front if the positioning is correct and adjust if you need to. Then, on the back using the end of my tweezers I push down the prong into the correct position. Taa Daa

Now you can attach your straps, they can be sewn on with a small box or with rivets or both. I’ve only recently started using rivets, Christine use to tell me all the time that I should. But I kept putting it off, but I must say they do make your bag look more professional.

Goregous handmade label bling available at Emmaline Bags!

So that it, another fantastic pattern by Christine … I’m sure her brain works over time when she’s designing. Loll

Thanks for reading and thanks to Christine for having me back… again. Loll she must be getting sick of me by now…loll until next time Hooroo from Australia.

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AWESOME! Thanks again Ellen! Designing is about the only time my brain works….the rest of the time it is in hibernation, I think! LOL

If you don’t have it already, you can grab the pattern for the Uptown Girl HERE!

Do you LOVE the Uptown Girl but don’t sew?…Just pop along to our new Buy and Sell Facebook group where you can find plenty of awesome people who do! 🙂 Sellers, you are most welcome to join us there too!

Until next time, happy sewing!