A Bag With Baggage

There comes a time when you can no longer rationalize and justify away procrastination with appointments and home viewings and visiting guests. You run out of excuses. You recognize I am procrastinating and you ask yourself why?

I left the JoAnna bag until the end because JoAnna's love of details made it the bag that I could be the most creative with. However. While there are all kinds of ideas dancing in my head for the shape, for the closure, for the handles, for the overall look, I forgot - or chose to ignore - that it was a bag with baggage. It's for one of the women that I no longer have any contact with and unfortunately our parting of the ways was more than a slow drifting apart. It was like the divorce that came from out of nowhere when you thought everything was fine and whose after shocks remain cuddled in pain.

When you realize that you're procrastinating, there's only one way through. Start. Make a decision that moves you forward and move. For me, that was to chose the zipper. I picked a hot pink color that matched with one of the hands. It's a bit long, a bit fat, a bit separating and that's okay - kind of ironic actually.

And then, I lowered my expectations to a less emotional and far more manageable level and instead of drafting my own slouchy shape with a self-manufactured purse frame and bead encrusted handles, I picked the only purse pattern in my stash that would fit the size of the hands. View C. McCall's 4531. Decision made. Moving on.

Earlier, when I made the Cindy purse, I used this purple crinkled taffeta as the binding. At the time, I remember thinking that it would make a fabulous lining for the JoAnna bag and it might still but first I'm using it as the outside. Starting on the front. Maybe more. We'll see. Later. I work one step at a time so I don't actually know what's coming next and that's good.

I layered and quilted the taffeta and then cut out the front pattern piece and shaped around the hands and determined their placement on the front. Then I patted paint on the side and watched it dry while I read some more essays by Stephanie. Now that I've started, I can continue. Sometimes, the hardest thing to do - and the only thing you can do - is START.

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - a friend told me recently that we don't get over the hurt of our past, instead we learn how to go on by healing and then carrying our scars into our new normal. So true. I'm grateful for her sharing.