Fixing Up Vera Part Two

The repair work on the Vera Bradley duffel bag with the pocket rip was pretty straight forward. Before washing the bag I did the patching; first I stitched the tear back together to flatten it, and used big stitches to give it flexability. I did this on both sides of the pocket.

I didn't have any fabric that really matched the bag, so I simply picked a floral fabric that I liked out of the scrap bin to sew a patch over the repair stitches on both sides of the pocket. This stops fraying and makes the pocket usable again.

The patch inside the pocket. I had to work in pretty tight conditions, as the pocket isn't really big and I couldn't turn it inside out all the way. It helped to use a very sharp needle and strong thread.

Disclaimer upfront: I don't recommend my washing methods to anyone collecting Vera Bradley bags, as the fabric is not always colorfast and it will make the bag look used.

I want to use these bags, and I want them clean. That's why I washed them in small batches in my washing machine on the delicate cycle and used warm water and regular laundry detergent with a color catcher sheet to catch dye bleeding (the lunchbox ended up being not so colorfast.) It's a good idea to check all the pockets first and remove any debris from them, too. I then hung them up on hangers to dry, and if you do this inside like I did this usually takes a few days.

One final warning: in some Vera Bradley bags they put removable cardboard inserts in the bottom to add support. I found two in mine; one in the stained tote and another in the light green bag. Remove these prior to washing. I'm not a fan of cardboard, so I'm planning to use these as templates for something made of plastic I can use to replace them.

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In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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