Thing one and Thing two

"I will pick up the hook.
You will see something new.
Two things. And I call them
Thing One and Thing Two.
These Things will not bite you.
They want to have fun."
Then, out of the box
Came Thing Two and Thing One!
And they ran to us fast.
They said. "How do you do?
Would you like to shake hands
With Thing One and Thing Two?" ~ Dr. Seuss

I made my three year old a couple of bags, the first is a bag for dance class. I looked at several options of buying ready made bags, but none quite fit what 'Queen Josephine' wanted. She is a princess and dance stuff is blingy, so I knew I could do better for cheaper.

I based the design off of a couple of patterns my mother-in-law had copied me years before. I'm not sure if these designs are still in print or not. I like the idea but I have not had alot of success with the straps/handles sewn directly to the screen. My first attempt at this pattern the straps tore off before I was done with the bag! Admittedly I am not using the craft weight of screen as you may be able to see in the scans here my mother-in-law recommended.

This bag was the first attempt, I added pouches to the inside to hold her shoes, and all in all I've been very happy with its performance over the past month, lugging around all of her dance goodies for all of her Christmas performances. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of her with it, but its very cute when she puts it over her shoulder and goes into the studio, it almost touches the ground!

I used the scraps from this project, and my knowledge of some of the things I didn't like and last night I finished another bag for her to use for daycare. I'm not sure yet how well it will hold up under the daily load, but I did base it on screen and I used a lining fabric and batting to help it have more body.

Lying flat I put the lining fabric wrong side up, then placed the screen, then batting which I used a small spritz of spray glue to hold it all in place. I sewed my pieces onto the top of the batting using a sew and flip method I learned in quilting. It's basically a 'crazy quilting' technique. I was trying to make this one more of the backpack model in the pattern but alas I decided I liked the opening being in the top for full viewing of the contents so I made up the same bag again. This caused my fabric placement to be slightly off, so I'm not as happy with this one but total cost for the two bags was about $18us. I want to see how they hold up and decide if I feel like it was worth the time and effort.

See - on a backpack the one side would have been 'against the back'. Therefore I pieced more on the other side for viewing. Oh well........one unfinished item out the door!


*****Updated*** - Screenplay Patterns
http://www.sewthankful.com/ScreenPlay.html