Anchor Birdie Sling

If nautical nonsense is something you wish,

check out my Anchor Birdie Sling!

Okay, so there’s really nothing nonsensical about this bag. Except maybe the fact that I gave it away.

Trust me, that was really hard to do. I knew going into this thing that I was making something really cute that I would want for myself. And that I really didn’t have to give it away because the recipient had no idea that I was going to give this to her.

But for the love of my mother, I gave it to her for Christmas.

I don’t regret it. She’ll get scads of use out of it for years to come. And then when she dies, I’ll get it back.

I know! Morbid! I can only joke about that because my mother has these super genes that will make her one of those, “over 100 years old” women. In all likelihood I will be getting the purse back when I’m so old that my vision is gone and I won’t even know what I’m looking at to appreciate it.

A few years ago my mom was talking nonchalantly about what each of her five children would inherit when she dies. One of us was going to get her camper trailer. I told her this was a pointless conversation as that thing will be long gone by the time my mother gets the call from heaven.

The only enticing item she offered as inheritance was her newer Pontiac GTO. Which will probably have attained “antique” status by then. I’m down with that. Though I think my baby sister is getting that. I don’t remember what I got. All I really want are the quilts that my great-grandmother made. Well, and the GTO. My sister and I may have to resort to a good old fashioned throwdown for that thing. Sadly, Kay will have 11 years of youth on me. In a fight between an 81-year-old and a 70-year-old, who do you imagine would win? Unless I invest in some brass knuckles. She wouldn’t expect that from an old lady…

Back to the purse.

There isn’t much to say about it that you can’t see. It’s from Amy Butler’s birdie sling pattern. The same one I used to make my Ghastlie Sling. I added a hanging key fob inside as well as sewed through the center of the large pocket so as to form two smaller ones: perfect for cellphones. I also appliqued on that anchor. That took quite a bit of time. Finding the perfect anchor image online. Downloading, resizing, printing, ironing the red fabric onto interfacing, tracing the anchor, cutting it out with an exacto knife, and ironing it onto the chevron fabric. Ironing it on while guessing all the while about the placement, since I knew the bottom of the bag curved under, but wasn’t sure how much.

Oh, and that crazy red band at the top. I didn’t think the red dots would blend well with the chevron, as they both had a lot of white in them. I decided that putting a bit of solid red at the bottom of the band would be a good breaker. THAT was tricky to do. Because while the top bands look straight, you really cut them out in large curved pieces. I had only a wee bit of the polkadot fabric left and had cut the first batch too small. Doh. I barely had enough extra to complete the bands!

Now do you see why it took me so long to finish my Ghaslie purse? It’s because I was making two purses at the same time! Making twice the mistakes! Like that one time when I cut the wrong pattern (four huge pieces) out of the fusible fleece. For both purses. I didn’t want to spend another $10 on fleece so I made it work by patching together the right size pieces.

Fortunately my mother will never notice any flaws in the purse. And if she does, I guess I’ll just have to take it back…