I felt confused and exhausted the other day when I finally got the pieces I needed quilted and cut. The prep on these ByAnnie bags are not trivial.
I spent time on and off prepping pockets, then all day Sunday making the ‘pages’, which are a big feature of this bag.
I chose to make all vinyl pockets, but with either type of pocket (mesh or vinyl), you have to add zipper heads to the zipper tape and then sew the zippers to the vinyl. There are a lot of pockets so it took forever. It took even longer, because, again, I used Tula Pink’s suggestion of covering the edges of the zippers with ribbon. I really like the effect, but it did take time.
I added a few more pockets than the pattern suggested. Fortunately, I was working on the project in little bits of time. This gave me time to think about the sewing before I actually did it. I realized that I would be sewing pockets to the back of a page that had pockets on the other side and that I had to be really careful. I only ran into problems one time and I was able to cover the part I didn’t like with ribbon. I am pleased, though, because I ended up with more pockets.
There are two sets of page. Each full page has two facing half pages. The pattern suggests you can play around with the pages and put they type of pages you want, but the choices are limited by the sewing.
You have to put one of the full page pockets (see pink back, bottom left) behind the two or three pocket pages, for the most part. If I make this bag again (or additional pages to swap out), I will make sure there is a full page behind a page of pockets with 2 or 3 pockets.
The pages are done and I am really pleased. This bag is taking much longer than I thought. Forget about the months I just thought about working on it. These four pages took me about 8 hours just to sew, not including prep. People will make these bags for you on Etsy for about $200 and the money is totally worth it!