I finally finished the Claudia Bag. I don't know what it was about this piece, but I fought with it all the way to finish. Hopefully now that I have one under my belt and the patterns and samples made the next one will go more quickly. The tough part was sewing the leather - sometimes my machine liked to sew it, and sometimes it did not. The tension on the machine had to be adjusted to how sharp or semi-sharp the needle was. So, if it was sewing fine on a slightly old needle and I put a new needle in, it would stop sewing correctly. When I started making this bag I was using all the scraps from the bridesmaid dress project, so I had no idea how much fabric it had taken. Later I went back and calculated how much it had used and it was over 6 yards of silk just for the flowers! Good grief! I was really lucky to find a leather store just down the street from me (or maybe not so lucky as now hundreds upon thousands of ideas are spilling forth and I don't got the means to support the habit :/ ), without it the bag would have been all silk. . . and I think the contrast of the leather adds a lot. Now I just need someone with a nice camera to take some shots of it for me.
I threw a high tea bachelorette party for Kaite this past Friday. We sipped on raspberry cordial and dinned on tea sandwiches, scones, chocolate covered strawberries, yummy jellies and creams and cake.