Seeing Spots

Weeks ago, my mom told me a friend of hers wants one of those clothespin bags shaped like a little dress. She brought it up again today, so I took that as a hint and got to work!

A Google search turned up two leads for patterns: one for sale at Clotilde.com and these directions derived from an old magazine by Kay P. Being the cheapskate I am, I opted to use the online directions, even though they weren't all that clear.

The bright pink dotty spotty fabric looked like a good candidate for this project. It's a little heavier, but not at all stiff. Tell me this, though: Why do I have four and a half yards of this fabric? What on earth was I planning to do with it? Anyway, once I decided on the pink, I went digging in my scrap pile for black and pulled out, guess what, a skirt!

Somewhere along the line, I'd removed the zipper for another project, so I just sewed the back seam shut and centered the piece for the main body of the bag along that seam. You can just barely see the hem tape near the top of this picture (and Isabella's rear end).

I have no idea if I put this together the way they intended. Well, I'm almost sure I didn't, because the sleeves and shoulders looked completely wrong at first, and I ended up redoing them. But it came out just the way I wanted, so I'm happy.

Now here's the funny part: I thought I'd post a tutorial with more explanations and pictures, but in a few places I ended up scrapping the directions and doing it my own way. So do I still post it or not?