Birdies on my Birdie Sling

I am embarrassed to admit that it wasn't until I was almost finished making this bag that I realized I had used bird fabric to make a bag called Birdie Sling. You would think it was some kind of plan, but no, I just currently try to make anything and everything out of this fabric by Anna Maria Horner. I own it in three different colorways. I'm working on finding a way to hang it on the wall. I'm extremely jealous of other peoples' curtains and pillows and quilt made with it (see, I'm not the only one obsessed). But now I have an awesome bag and can carry it everywhere, yahoo! The top bands and handles are from Amy Butler Midwest Modern fabric and the lining is from Anna Maria Horner's new Garden Party fabrics. Here is my pattern review of Amy Butler's Birdie Sling:

Cost to make: $42.00 (fabric, interfacing, fleece)

Time to make:

1 hour 40 min to cut out fabric

45 min to cut out interfacing

2 hours to iron on interfacing

4 hours 30 min to assemble

total time: 9 hours (rounded up)

Alcohol consumed: 1 beer (it was really, really hot steaming on the interfacing with no air conditioning)

Minor screw-ups: 1

Major screw-ups: 1

Summary: Overall, this pattern was great. Very detailed and easy to follow. I only have a couple of suggestions...

-when cutting out the pieces, you can save fabric by repositioning the fold to cut out the skinnier handles and bands. With the cost of fabric these days you definitely want to save as much as possible!

-don't forget to flip your pattern pieces when cutting on opposite folds (minor screw-up with a band piece, so amateur!)

-my one and only complaint with the pattern is that the pictures for when you are attaching the bands to the exterior and interior pieces are very misleading! I know, they try to make it look all nice, but you are attaching curves that are going in the opposite direction of each other, not laying all nice and neat together. Definitely go back to your cut-out pattern pieces and figure out which end is up. When you do it wrong it looks like this:

Then you do a lot of this:

And redo it correctly to look like this:

This is the first bag I have ever finished completely by myself (no panic calls to mom to come help me) and I have quite a new appreciation for people who design and make bags to sell on Etsy or to boutiques, as easy and straight forward as this was I would not want to make one every day. One last comment about this one... it is a big bag, you could carry a whole lot of crap in this thing, so really it's perfect for summer.