Because it really is all about the treats...

My last couple of evenings have been all about sewing. And that...is a sentence I never thought I would type. See, blog friend Joanna (Ms. Craft Queen herself - along with Kelly - both just put me to shame with all their craftyness) posted a tutorial on how to make halloween treat bags, and then challenged all her friends to make a treat bag this year. It's a tradition she has created to make her girls a treat bag that matches their costume and has their name on it. I love that idea...and I would love to be THAT kind of mom - but crafts are not my strong point. In fact sewing in general is probably my LEAST enjoyed task, and the one thing I really suck at. But, I didn't want to back down on the challenge without at least trying. Besides, it's for my boy right?

So I dragged my lazy butt to the store and bought some felt for the bag. I then went home and ransacked my craft box (I know, believe it or not, I have a large box of crafty crap stored under my bed) and found tacky glue, thread, an exacto knife and even a cutting pad with measurements on it. Who knew I had all that stuff lurking under my bed? I got out my sewing box, which is PINK of all things ( I don't do pink, but my mother in law bought it for me and since it was for breast cancer proceeds, I love it anyway) and sat down on my living room floor to plan it all out.

Adam is dressing up as Larry the Cucumber from Veggie Tales (to be explained in a later post) and so I decided to attempt a bag that looked like Bob the Tomato. So I cut everything out and decided to sew the face on by hand, which turned out to be a good thing because I got the idea to stuff a bit of cotton in the eyes, nose, and mouth to make them stand out a bit more. I surprised myself by how much it actually looked like Bob when I was all done with just the face part. For the green leafy part at the top, I was going to glue it on, but turns out - storing tacky glue under your bed for over 5 years without using it...chances are it will be dry as a bone - so I ended up finding some stitch witchery (that stuff that you just iron on and it sticks) and that worked pretty well. I did that for the letters in Adam's name too. For the record, stitch witchery is normally my sewing method of choice. All the curtains in our bedroom were "hemmed" using this fabulous stuff. No way I could mess that up - ha!

So then, I got out our sewing machine. Now when I say sewing machine I don't actually mean a regular sized sewing machine. I mean an itty bitty little sewing machine that we got for like twenty bucks and has been gathering dust in the way back of our closet. See? cute lil thing..

The fact that it says dressmaker on it cracks me up because you might be able to make a DOLL'S dress on this thing, but a dress for an actual human being? - fugettaboutit.

Itty Bitty. For comparison sake...here it is next to a can of soda...

Not your average machine. In fact, I've never even used it before (although I have used a sewing machine before and know how they work even if I suck at it). I sat down to try and hem the handles and...well...this happened. Yeah, it was a mess. I jammed that machine up 3 times before I cursed out loud and hubs heard me and goes "oh yeah, it did that to me all the time too!" Great.

So I sat there wondering what I was going to do because I still had to sew the actual bag together. I decided to just sit down and get cracking because my only other option was to sew it together by hand. And I did. And it took me two evenings of tv watching combined with hand sewing to finish it. I double stitched everything because I wanted it to be strong enough to hold actual candy...so it took longer than I expected. But it's done, and I'm so happy with it!

I can't wait for Adam to wake up and see it! I feel like I actually accomplished something I'm proud of - wooooooo! Thank you Joanna and Kelly and all you other crafty bag makers for inspiring me to follow through with this one :)