Bowling and Sewing

Yeah I know the 2 don't really go together but that's how I occupied myself last night. Lest you think I am really multi-talented, I must confess that I didn't do them both at the same time.

I met up with Lily and her young friend Paulie (9) last night at the AMF Bowling Alley in Mishawaka. They have $1 Tuesdays. Almost everything is $1; bowling, hot dogs, pop, beer. Shoe rental is $3.75, but everything else is pretty cheap. I wasn't really enthused about going at first. I was having an "I hate the world and everyone in it day" (Aka PMS) and didn't really feel like going. But I hadn't seen Lily in a while and we had to cancel the last couple of bowling nights because she was sick. I did have a good time once I got there. I am a terrible bowler, but that's OK since so are Lily and Paulie. We played 3 games, I won one. The only downside to the night was that I ate too much junk food. I had some onion rings, a hot dog and 2 hot wings. And boy does it show on my face today that I ate too much deep fried food last night; Zits galore. I did find out that you can bring in your own snacks and they don't say anything. So next time, I will bring my own stuff.

Then I went home and sewed on a bag that I had started the night before. Last May, when I was in Georgia I bought a pattern for a mesh bag called Screen Play, designed by Nancy Ota. It is a tote bag made using window/pet screen. I had only seen the pet screen in black, but when I was at Sweet Home Quilt Co. in Conyers, GA they had some in HOT PINK. I loved it and just had to have it. Of course then the stuff sat around for almost a year before I did anything with it. Does that happen to other people too? So I dug out the pattern and the screen on Monday night. Then it took me an hour to find the right combination of fabrics to sew on my Hot Pink Screen. I made few changes: mine is a little taller than the pattern called for and I used belt webbing for the handle instead of mesh. I thought it would feel softer. Here it is:

And another picture with a picture of the pattern front included, so you can see what it looked like.

Here is a close up of the inside seams. This is the first time, that I have had any success with the 'pre-made' bias tape. It was used to cover up the raw edges of the seams.

The funny thing is that when I bought this pattern last year, my Mom and I thought it would be fun to make some for our Georgia/San Antonia family. I wanted to try the pattern out first, but when we found the perfect fabric in Kentucky on our way home we decide we had to have it. I went ahead and bought a whole role of the black pet screen at Lowe's to go along with our Mexican Loteria (bingo) fabric. Now that I have tried out the pattern, we have to start cutting out the fabric and screen to make 10 more totes I think. It won't be as hard as you think though, because they will all be identical. Can you say "assembly line" sewing?