Dog Days

Am I the only one who listens to new (to me) albums on repeat, for weeks on end? Maybe I'm just weird like that. Florence + the Machine tells me, about every 50 minutes or so, that the Dog Days Are Over, but I'm still stuck in sweltering DC. Summer in DC is supposed to be sweltering -- which is why I don't like it and try (not always successfully) to avoid it. But the end of May? It's not supposed to be this damn hot. But before it got too hot to move, much less wield an iron, I made a bag. Well, I made a few other things too, but we'll stick with the bag for this post.

At this point, I think I've trained my friends to not expect timely birthday presents. As per usual, I knew I wanted to make Claire a Lickety Split bag -- I find it to be one of the most versatile bags I've made and own. At a Del Ray Fabrics tent sale a few weeks ago, I snagged some fabric for it. When I last saw Claire, she mentioned surrounding herself with bright colors to make her black-clothes-base shine (and she rocks both bags and shoes). This is one of the few prints from Amy Butler's Lark collection that I liked, and I think it will play nicely with black clothes.

I make a couple modifications to the bag pattern -- I add some fabric ties in the center but make only 2 pockets. Usually the side with the pockets seems like the de facto "inside" but with this bag, I'm not so sure. Because these pockets, they are awesome.

See: awesome! Shiny, happy, awesome. Home-dec weight birds that pretty perfectly match the olive snail scallop print (from Tula Pink's Prince Charming collection). It's a good thing the pockets are on opposite sides because I think they're about an 1/8" different from one another, due to some winging it while fussy-cutting the bird. I'm quite certain it has no effect on its utility.