I feel like I should start a blog series titled, “Alie’s Adventures in Sewing”, because every sewing project with me is quite the adventure. Just ask my family. Be it hemming curtains, stitching pillows, or making superhero capes (more on that later) it usually involves some huge error which could have been prevented but was not.

Because let’s face it: as I told Tyler this weekend, I can either laugh or I can cry, and I usually choose laughter.

A little over a month ago my friend Lindsay and I were fed up with trying to find non-character, non-cutesy backpacks. So we made our boys toddler backpacks, staying up til almost 11:30pm sewing them. Four hours and about $20 worth of supplies. Totally worth it.

I used this pattern found on etsy, and for the most part it was straight forward and easy to follow. Did I mention Lindsay and I are non-experienced sewers? Sometimes I branch out into the world of curtain-making or pillow-sewing. Last night it was superhero cape-making for our Halloween costumes, although I doubt mine could stand up to the quality of the eccentric Edna Mode’s in The Incredibles. (She’s their family’s fashion designer. And we may or may not have watched that movie yesterday.)

Anyway, the adventure part comes where I absentmindedly cut open Jack’s backpack. We were rushing to leave for the gym and the inside of the backpack’s raw edges were driving me crazy. So I quickly took the scissors to them and ended up cutting two huge gashes in the backpack. Oops.

I was at a complete loss as to how to fix it, almost giving up.  I brought it up to my grandma’s house two weekends ago for help. My grandma is the best. She patiently helped me rip apart the seams on about half the backpack and helped me cut out new pieces to stitch the entire thing back together. My three-second mistake with the scissors cost us over two hours of time to repair. Lesson learned…hopefully. :)

Proud of me, Mom?

I should also note that the one thing I was disappointed with was the backpack’s interior was left raw. Luckily my grandma helped me by surging the seams, which I’d recommend if you have access to a surger. It cleans up the lines and raw edges much better.