Week 37 or The Ugliest Fabric Ever

I got this fabric when I lived in Malden, more than a decade ago. It wasn't pretty then and time has not treated it well. We used to live around the corner from two upholstery shops. At some point I asked for their scraps and got a bunch of stuff, this among it.

I made a few Christmas stockings out of it and then it just sat. There's really not much you can do with rubber-backed sage green fabric with a diamond pattern woven in. It's absolutely not appropriate for clothing. Not even costumes. Stuffed animals would be unhuggable. Perhaps placemats, with a nice dark green edging; they would stay put on the table, but who has the decor to match them? I shudder to imagine a room filled with a couch covered in this.

Well, a grocery bag seems as good a use as any. The handles were a scrap from... something. It's actually quite lovely fabric, nice and soft and smooth, perhaps a very sturdy silk. I think I inherited it from my grandmother. She died 16 years ago.

Now you see why I need to make bags every week. My apartment is very slowly emerging from under decades of hoarding. I gave away a fold-up bag to the grocery store bagger yesterday. He's a very friendly guy, with mild special needs that cause him to tell me the story of Bell & Evans chicken whenever I buy their nuggets. Or how he should get his sister in New York City a bag that folds up as small as my Chico bag. Well, I wasn't about to give him something I would have to pay to replace. Plus it was filled with groceries. So I found the other bag in the trunk of the car and ran back to give it to him.

And I have, in a way, replaced a bag derived from the wardrobe of the distinguished grays with a bag worthy of a blue hair. I was a few days late already, so I wasted no time with such niceties as a proper box bottom. (I just tucked the bottom in when I sewed the side seams.) Or a separate step to attach the handles. I did stitch along the lines of the diamond pattern to reinforce the handles, though. It was enough pressure on my obsessive tendencies to see the box bottom diagonals clashing with the diamond diagonals. I could not bear to sew x-boxes to reinforce the handles.

I promise to do something more inspired on Thursday and post again this weekend. OK, maybe not more inspired but at least with nicer fabric.