umami spiral bag tutorial by grrl+dog
DESCRIPTION
Umami is an amazing japanese Designer. Make this bag from a circle of cloth. Deciphered from a japanese Craft book and fiddled with by grrl+dog.TRANSCRIPT
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Umami Spiral Bag tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
Umami Spiral bag tutorial by grrl+dog This bag was inspired by the amazing post modern designs by Umami - Ezura Yoshimi. Her book is: Umami 's Canvas Fabric World. It has spectacular bag designs as well as other accessories that are well worth the investment. I get mine from Pomadour . She sends them postage free from her etsy shop.
Since I can’t read Japanese, I fudged my way through it and was so delighted, I had to share. This very simple design is easy to make in six steps, resulting in a spectacular looking piece that will adapt to many variations. I love how the shape begins with a giant circle of fabric and grows organically into a bag. It’s a great way to use up random pieces of fabric that are larger than one metre square. The handles were a belt from the op shop, costing $3.00. You can use an old leather belt too if you have a leather needle for your sewing machine.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
The six steps are:
1. Cut the circle 2. Hem the edge 3. Fold the edges and pin it 4. Sew a spiral round and round
and round and round 5. Add handles 6. Dance around the lounge
room with it.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
Materials:
1. A large square of fabric. Why square? Because the first thing you do is cut it into a circle. For this tutorial I used a sturdy white cotton denim drill scrounged from the recycling shop. It was about a metre square. It made a bag roughly 20 cms high, by 20 cms deep and 27 across. The first bag I made was much larger, perhaps 2 metres squared and it required much more sewing. You can make your bag any size, and from any fabric, as long as it can form a square.
2. Strong polyester thread. As the cotton drill is tough and there will sometimes be up to four layers at a time being sewn avoid frustration and get strong thread. 3. 5 or 6 wound bobbins of matching thread, because it’s annoying to have to stop and wind a bobbin.
4. A hundred pins - go on, count them out.
5. A bandaid because Murphy’s Law says you will prick your finger and bleed all over it like I did.
6. Measuring tape or ruler
7. Chalk or something to mark the circle with
8. Sewing machine with a denim/leather needle.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
1. Cut the circle
(a)Fold the square of fabric into quarters. Use the tape measure to see how long one edge is. Mine was 14.5 inches.
(b) Hold the tape measure with one finger on the bottom corner of the folds. In this picture, the corner is the bottom left. We are going to mark out a quarter circle.
(c)With one finger securing down the tape at bottom corner, and a marker and tape at the other end, mark out a quarter circle,
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
(d) Cut the quarter circle out and lay the full circle flat ready to hem.
2 .Hem the edge
If the thread and fabric color match, zig zag around the edge of the bag then fold it down a centimetre and stitch a hem. The top of the bag is what you will see most often, so decide how rough or smooth this will be. If you are lucky enough to have an overlocker, go ahead and do it that way.
3. Fold the edges
(a)See how the circle already has four folds in it ? Use these as a guide. Find the place between each fold and create a big pleat, as shown here.
(b)Imagine your fabric circle is the face of a giant clock. The fold lines match up to 12, 3, 6 and nine o clock. Make your first pin fold between those folds like at around 1:30. As shown.
Fold, pleat and pin all the way round the circle till you have four large pleats at roughly 90 degrees to each other. Use more pins to tack down each pleat as it travels into the center.
.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
(c) Now go round again, making pleats in the fold lines. You should now have eight large chunky pleats. When it sits up it should look like a giant lemon meringue pie - all puffy in the middle. But this is not nearly enough.
(d) Go crazy with the pleating and folding and tucking till it takes a shape you like, and the opening is satisfactory. You can always do more when it’s time to sew. There are no mistakes here.
. Well done on the pinning bit. If you are lucky there won’t be blood drops on the fabric and your fingers won’t be collaged with band aids, like mine.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
4. Sew it round and round and round and round. (a)Now you’re ready to sew the giant spiral. The book says to begin at the bottom, but I started at the top, to give more freedom to the pleats and control the opening of the bag more. It’s a rough ride at first, going over so many pleats, so take your time. If your machine loves you the tension will be fine and there won’t be seventeen miles of bobbin thread tangled up underneath the folds. If there is, you know to change the tension and take the stitch length out a bit till you and the fabric and the thread are one. Which didn’t happen to me first go, it was seventeen miles of unpicking till I got all Zen with the machine. Note campari in the background assisting in the getting of Zen. Note pin heads facing away from sewing so they can slip out easier.
Note messy top stitching as I got tense over tension.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
Here you can see the folds getting sewn down and the lines moving towards the base. (b)After a while of going round and round, the pleats will eventually run out.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
(c)The bottom of the bag is emerging and soon you will be stitching in a dwindling spiral of circles on the base. . This is what the final spiral of stitching looks like.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
(d)Now is a good time to go over the bag and check for any bits that may need to be sewn down, and that the opening of the bag is satisfactory . 5.Attaching handles This is the easiest part. (a)Simply cut your chosen thrift store belt in half, creating two handles. (b)Zig zag each end to stop fraying. (c) Pin each handle on the bag, measuring or by eyeballing. (b)Pin in place and take it back to the sewing machine for attachment. There will be major bulk under the needle at this stage, so go slowly, check the tension, lengthen the stitches and breathe. Stitch along the same lines as the bag is done to blend in. Using thrift store bag handles or belts makes an exciting textural contrast to the bag and adds to its organic charm.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
6. Dance around the room with it Yay! A designer bag hand made by you. If you like try out other combinations of fabric and thread. I do like the super huge size that began with 2 square metres. It was a lot of sewing, but the size was perfect.
Tips for Sewing: • Before you start, check you have up to five wound bobbins of thread. • Pins lining up the same way • A strong denim or leather needle in the machine. • I sewed my first one on a regular needle and broke it only at the very end of the bag, so if
you don’t have a denim needle or the fabric of choice is not heavy drill, go ahead and use a regular needle.
• The tension on bobbin and top threads are set loosely. • Longer stitch length selected. • When in doubt – do something wild and crazy like read the instruction manual.
Tips for pleating and folding • Fold the fabric towards you, in the direction you would be sewing in. It makes the hills
and valleys easier to run over with the sewing machine.
• Use more pins and travel down the pleat a way to lay out flat. Let the pleat go where it wants to, as this is the beauty of the bag.
• Don’t fret too much about the pleating part, it is meant to be organic and the end result is beautiful.
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com
I hope the steps are clear and not too confusing. There are probably many ways to make this bag, so boldly go and try out your own version. If you spot any glaring mistakes or muddy spots, help me become a better tutorial maker and let me know: [email protected] One day I hope to master all the bags in Umami’s fantastic book. If you want to get your own, here are the relevant details for purchasing including the ISBN: Title: Unami's Canvas world Author Name(s): ezura yoshimi ISBN: 4579112717 / 9784579112715 Release Date: 2009-10-19 Language: Japanese Pages: 103 Pages
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Umami Spiral Bag Tutorial by grrl+dog www.grrlandog.com