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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Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

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.

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.

Valerean

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