Bag the Big Bag!

I have never been a purse loving woman

     For decades I carried one form or another of Eagle Creek travel/sport pouches.  This drove my girlie girlfriends nuts.   As soon as I started fossiling I downsized even more.  Every week I needed to fit my most important stuff into a pouch small enough to slip into a dry bag for a ride on my kayak and I realized that I didn't miss the things that didn't fit into that tiny pouch.

     I am starting to amass quite a collection of little pouches yet they all fit into one small drawer.  Brilliant!  Couldn't I make my own perfect pouch?  I was looking around my house for fabrics and saw stacks of boxer shorts in traditional boxery plaids and stacks of Mike's work jeans that were so worn they could no longer be mended.  Perfect!  I got to work.

I am not a seamstress.

     I just wanted to sew a little pouch that I could #1 Use for myself and #2 Stock in my Etsy store in the hopes of someday making a little cash from all my aimless creativity.  It should all be so easy!

I dusted off my mother's 1972 Kenmore sewing machine, found a cute pattern on the internet, and started my new venture.

     Unfortunately, a close reading of the instructions suggested that the author spoke English as a second language and suffered from some memory issues since large chunks of the directions seemed to be missing.  I tried to guess my way through it but the zipper, a notion that has always filled me with insecurity, looked "funny."

     I found a second pattern that was more clearly written and I now have my Inside/Outside zippered wrist pouch.  

     OMG!  It's so cute!  And the name?  The cutest thing ever:  "Inside" for my man's boxer shorts (even though they are actually my boxer shorts and their fabric is on the outside) and "Outside" for my man's jeans.  Awww!

     All that cuteness aside, I've been carrying my original pouch for weeks and I love it.  The fabrics are soft and comfortingly familiar and the pouch carries everything I need:  cell phone, even tinier pouch of ID's, lip gloss, eye liner, gum, fingernail clippers (gotta have those!), keys, specs (if needed), and I can squeeze in a bag of M&M's if I'm going to the cinema.