Airplane Bag

Friends! This post is a two-fer today. Here follow both a tutorial and - in the spirit of healing amidst grief - a story about finding meaning. 

First, the grief story.

Let's backtrack a bit to Christmas 2019, when the kids, the husband and I were prepping for our trip to Singapore. With one or two exceptions when we'd just had newborns, we've made this trip annually, with a default itinerary: a three-hour layover in Tokyo on an otherwise direct flight between Minneapolis and Singapore. A few years ago however, the relocation of airline hubs and rerouted flights changed things up and each trip thereafter became an experiment of sorts - a balance of many factors beyond just the cost. In the process we discovered a new favorite route via Europe. The whole thing is almost 30 hours long, including a 9 hour layover in the Netherlands, but it's still superior to our least preferred route via the West Coast which includes a non-stop 17-hour leg, ungodly transit times and subpar food. More efficient, yes, but regrettably at the cost of everyone's sanity. 

It was always, always worth it, though, to spend time with family in Singapore, and to soak in the warmth after weeks of frigid winter. But it was also always, always a beautiful thing to return home to Minnesota and know that for the next eleven-and-half months, we could enjoy all the memories of those lovely sunny days and none of the actual commute. Then the next year would roll around and we'd do it all over again - because we love and miss our family and because we're actually really thankful (in spite of my grumbling) that we can get on an airplane and bridge those miles in a fraction of the time it would've taken our forebears via steamers and slowboats back in the day.

Summary: contrary to what motivational speakers may say, our trips to Singapore are absolutely all about the destination and not about the journey. After all, there is no escaping the fact that it's a very, very long flight, regardless of how humanely one has tried to break it up into shorter segments via Nicer Airports or transits at unghastly o'clock.

Now, the kids, bless their optimistic and adventurous souls, have gamely undertaken this trip since they were infants-in-arms (also in-utero, but that doesn't count). That is not to say we, as parents, didn't appreciate how tough this has been some years, so we introduced whatever we could to make the traveling a little less odious. When they were little, we'd pack gifts of toys, favorite treats and art supplies they could unwrap mid-flight. When they were old enough to manage their own entertainment, we'd hoard books and download music and new movies onto electronic devices. This past year, the girls were seasoned enough travelers that they researched packable jackets, travel pillows and blankets, headphones, and other things to aid in semi-decent sleep - if sleep were at all possible in relentlessly upright seats designed for people whose heads were at least a foot higher than the average adult, let alone wee ones. It was exciting for them to advocate for themselves and to pack their own carry-ons with items they knew from experience would be useful. And it was a break for me, after more than a decade of packing for four, to be able to focus on just myself.

It was then that I remembered something I'd always needed on a plane and wanted to get for the kids: a back-of-the-seat thingy to contain all the bits and bobs of the cabin experience: spectacles, water bottles, disinfecting wipe packets, headphones, half-eaten packs of snacks, phones and their associated cables and attachments - those random things you'd stuff in that unhygienic mesh pocket with the dog-eared magazines each time you had to stand up to use the bathroom. 

I googled possible retail solutions on amazon, and found instead things like this. Overly sophisticated and thus disappointing - all those multiple zippered pockets, while perfect for flat adult stuff like passports, were a somewhat restricted design for kids needing just one large receptacle in which to conveniently dump all their junk at a moment's notice.

I'd have to sew it, I realized with dawning horror. Which meant that before that, I'd have to design the blessed thing. Which, in any other year, is the story of my life, but in this year felt particularly out of my league.

I am bereaved, I moaned to the uncaring universe. Grief is not compatible with creativity! I don't have the emotional energy to read a ruler, let alone invoke geometry!    

All true. 

Yet a part of me desperately wanted it not to be true, wanted to create again, to find pleasure in the beauty of fabric and colors and a project-in-progress. I didn't know it at the time, but it would've been the perfect antidote to loss and death: birthing an idea into a new, vibrant thing I could see and touch and enjoy. 

It was a stretch, though, so I started small. I sewed drawstring bags to store the travel pillows and all the other travel paraphernalia the kids had been collecting. Which in itself was deeply satisfying in that I got to pull out my stash of ripstop nylon, cord stops and carabiners and custom-make pouches that magically compressed monstrously fluffy things into compact little sausages. All math and no design. Boringly utilitarian but safely methodical. A good first step, and one that loosened something inside me. Freedom, perhaps.

Then I began to remember what it was like to Make A New Thing. How to imagine a shape and the three-dimensional volume it occupied. What that would look like as a bag on the back of the seat in front of me and where it might hang in relation to my knees. How it could sag under weight and fall to one side or the other as it emptied. The sounds it might make in a quiet cabin, to the person seated a foot away. How efficiently it could be hooked on or off to allow that person its space  enroute to the aisle. Which parts would be ultimately visible and needed the nice fabric and which parts would be hidden under outer layers. Which sections needed to be sewn first and which last. What ratios of height-to-width and print-to-solid would look proportionate and aesthetically pleasing.

Designwise, the prototype was pretty close, I thought. But the heft of it was all wrong. I'd hoped to channel the spirit of a hammock or parachute: something almost insubstantial that surprised with its strength. The prototype had interfacing, and it was too thick, too in-your-face heavyweight, too much. 

So I made two more, without the interfacing. Much better. You might be able to see the difference below - the grey prototype in the middle is just that much bulkier.

But you probably want to see them in action. 

Two carabiners hook the bag onto that seat pocket, and the mouth of the bag falls open to access its contents.

There are three external pockets which I'll show you later, but the main compartment, which is the whole point of the design, holds a lot of stuff, even tossed higgledy-piggledy.

Magnetic snaps in the lining

rein things in a bit 

while still allowing easy access to the contents.

To store, just unhook the carabiners, roll it up and toss it into your carry-on.

Here are more pictures in better lighting.

Construction-wise, it's a simple bucket-style tote, with a flat back and curved front. The outer layer of the bag is solid duckcloth and home-dec accent fabric.

The lining is ripstop nylon which apart from being very lightweight and strong, is also easy to clean with a disinfecting wipe.  The bag opening gapes the way it does because of a strip of boning - it's the same concept as those nursing covers that hang from your neck and pull away from your body so you can peer at your baby underneath.

The accent panel in the front is an organizer of sorts with three - two on either side of its midline

and a zippered welt pocket on the front of the left chamber for particular precious items like jewelry and loose change. 

I included a hanging loop because the tray tables of some airlines have a plastic hook/latch which would allow you to suspend the bag at eye level as well as down by your knees.

 

The carabiners are removable so the bag can be washed. And also so that it can be sewn without the hardware pre-attached. And the strap holds the bag in a compact roll for storage.

When I finished the three bags, I gave them to the girls for Christmas and found myself unexpectedly weepy when they opened their packages. Were this a different year, this would've been when I'd call my Dad on the phone or FaceTime for a tell-all. Or when we'd arrived in Singapore and I got to recount my latest sewn inventions in person. We would've turned these bags inside out and dissected the construction. He'd have examined the fabric and hardware, produced his own collection of carabiners and we'd have brainstormed ways to improve the design or deduced other contexts in which to use a bag like this. It'd be a good bicycle basket, he'd have said, IF it were made of this-and-that material so as to stand up to rain, and IF it had this extra panel of anchors here from which to attach that number of additional carabiners and hooks so it could hold bags there. 

It was what we always did, both of us wildly animated - he with his stories of sports and pastimes and their associated bags and cases; I with my rants about the scarcity of good utility fabrics in the local craft stores of America. Our projects were quite different - he made cases for compound bows and darts and mandolins; I made morphing backpacks, wallets and handbags with a demented assortment of pockets - but it was a niche we shared, regardless. His ideas were ingenious and ambitious and I would always leave those conversations inspired, excited, heard. But now I couldn't, would probably not find anyone like him, whose mind - of all the sewing people I know - came closest to working the way mine does. Grief has a twisted sense of surprise, I've found. A year after losing Dad, I'd begun to feel a little like my old self again. It wasn't until I'd finished those three bags that I remembered what it felt like not to have him on the other side of a show-and-tell, my sounding board and staunch supporter of all things daring and bold.

So, with the children and husband as solemn witnesses, I bawled my eyes out beside our Christmas tree. And then we got on our plane and flew to Singapore anyway. For which I am so thankful, even though Dad wasn't there. Because after that the pandemic hit us all and no one got to fly anywhere for a long time, which made some of us stir-crazy and others downright miserable. And that, funnily enough, is grief in a nutshell, isn't it?

But back to this bag - Dad would've been amused by it, I think. And I thought I'd share it with you guys, too, because grief is also hope. Someday we will get on planes again and be able to travel to new lands and old friends and family. Someday it will occur to us once more that the world is a good place that's welcoming and exciting more than it is terrifying and unsafe. Someday we will plan a trip with our kids and get all giddy-headed about the novelty of traversing time zones and entire continents in a single day. It seems unthinkable now, but it will happen. Look forward and hope for it, friends.

And when that time comes, perhaps you might like a bag to hold all the kidphernalia on your plane. Or a minivan car seat. Or a bicycle. Or a school locker. Or a wheelchair. Or one of those foldable lawn seats. Or even the back of your sewing chair, like I used in my photoshoot. Which brings us to part two of this post: the tutorial (or, because it's after the fact, the deconstruction). Happy making.

First, download the templates and cutting plan for the Airplane Bag. 

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

As most of the pieces are rectangles, I didn't bother to trace them all out. Instead, each piece with its dimensions is listed in the cutting plan, along with instructions to cut it out of its respective fabric(s). The full list of materials (fabrics, notions, hardware) is also in the cutting plan. 

Remember that this is a deconstruction and not a real-time tutorial (here is an older post explaining the difference in more detail), so the actual step-by-steps are going to feel skimpier than usual, and instead of WIP-photos, there will be sketches and diagrams.

OVERVIEW:

The Airplane Bag is made as two separate layers: 

1. the outer bag, which has all the utility features (Organizer on the Front,  carabiner Anchors on the Back, Strap inserted into one side seam),  and
2. the bag lining, which is featureless except for the (optional) magnetic snaps.

Each bag layer is constructed separately and then connected by a final seam around their opening. 

Because this was meant to be lightweight and non-bulky for packing on board an aircraft, I used thin fabrics that were also strong - duckcloth for the outer bag, ripstop nylon for the bag lining and quilting-cotton or home-dec accent fabric for the Organizer. With this combination of fabrics, there was no need for stabilizer or interfacing. The duckcloth, being of a good weight, provided strength and structure and the ripstop contributed practically no bulk and facilitated cleaning and disinfecting on board the airplane. Feel free to substitute other fabrics, but avoid using interfacing because of their added bulk (you'll notice it when you roll the bag up). 

A note about carabiners: there is a mind-boggling array of carabiners out there in different sizes, shapes, opening-styles (screw, gate, snap, etc) and prices. A helpful thing to remember is that there are such things as weight- (or load-) bearing carabiners which are used in sports like mountaineering and rock-climbing and suchlike. These are often listed along with the load they can bear and will cost a lot more because they are extremely strong. You don't need those kinds of carabiners for this project - look instead for the sort you can find at craft stores or Etsy or even Amazon, which are lightweight, relatively inexpensive and typically advertised in the same capacity as keychains. I used 3" (this is the external height) snap/gate carabiners for this bag, which I found in a pack of 10 on Amazon here.

STAGE 1: Make the Strap

Notes: The Strap wraps around the bag when it is rolled up for storage and portability. For simplicity, I used a length of thick grosgrain ribbon (a lightweight trim or webbing is a suitable alternative) but you can make your own with quilting cotton (again, avoid interfacing - absolutely unnecessary).

The exact width of the Strap is inconsequential. Pick whatever ribbon or trim you have on hand. I happened to have a 1.5" ribbon and 1.5"-wide hook and loop tape, so I used those. The length of the Strap and the positions of the hook and loop tape pieces are also inexact - they depend on the materials you used for the Bag. For instance, less bulky materials produce a tighter roll, for which you'll need a shorter Strap with the hook and loop fasteners placed closer together. You might even choose attach the Strap to the Bag without the hook-and-loop tape. When the Bag is completed, you can roll it up and determine the exact positions of the hook-and-loop tape to achieve a tight, snug roll before attaching them.

I used a length of 11-1/2" ribbon. This included 1/2" seam allowance (SA) at the end that inserts into the side of the Bag and 1/2" seam allowance at the other end that is folded over to prevent fraying.

The finished Strap, attached to the side of the completed bag, looks like this:

Let's begin.

At one end of the ribbon (this will be the free end of the Strap), fold 1/2" over to the wrong side (WS) of the ribbon and place the piece of hook tape on top, right up to the folded edge. With the folded SA sandwiched between the hook tape and the ribbon, sew around the edge of the hook tape to attach it to the Strap.

Flip the Strap over and sew on the piece of loop tape, so that the hook and loop tape are on opposite sides of the Strap, 

and the distance between the pieces is about 7-1/2".

Here is the Strap of the grey bag, on which the hook and loop tape is more visible. Note also that the Strap is attached to the left side of the grey bag,

while the Strap of the navy bag is attached on the right. Either orientation will work. Set aside the Strap. We'll attach it in a later step.

STAGE 2: Attach the carabiner Anchors

Note: Use grosgrain ribbon, trim or lightweight webbing whose width fits the internal dimensions of your carabiners. I used 2"-wide ribbon for my 3" carabiners.

Place the Outer Back piece right side (RS) up on your work surface in the "landscape" orientation i.e. the longer sides are horizontal and the shorter sides are vertical. For reference, this is what the completed Outer Back will look like, with both Anchors attached.

Cut two pieces of ribbon, each 2-1/2" wide. These are the Anchors. Fold 1/4" of each cut side to the WS of the ribbon.

Following the marks on the template, position one Anchor at one upper corner of the Outer Back piece, pushing the folded edges of the Anchor toward each other to create a bulging channel between them, as shown in the photo below. Sew a 1/4" wide rectangle of stitching on either side of the channel, concealing the folded edges of the ribbon within the seams in the process. This is one completed carabiner Anchor.

After the Bag is completed, we will slide the carabiner through the channel. 

Attach the second Anchor to the other upper corner of the Outer Back piece. Set the Outer Back piece aside.

STAGE 3: Make the Organizer

Note: The Organizer is simply a big external pocket that spans the entire width of the bag. In the photos, it is that outer overlay of accent fabric, 

which has been attached at both sides as well as along its midline. The stitched midline divides the large pocket into two chambers. The left half has an additional zippered welt pocket on the front. 

This is arguably the fiddliest part of the whole Bag, and entirely because of that zippered welt pocket. If you'd prefer an easier sew, omit the zipper completely and skip past this first diagram.

If you'd like to install the zipper, let's do that now. In the first diagram below are my measurements for the location of the welt opening as seen on the RS of the Outer Organizer piece. If you have a favorite method of making a zippered welt pocket, go for it. Otherwise, I have a couple tutorials here and here you might find useful. Note that contrary to the instructions in those linked tutorials, I didn't line this zippered welt pocket. Two reasons: I wanted to save time and effort because I was mass-producing these bags for my kids' own use, and I wanted as few fabric layers as possible. What an unlined pocket amounts to is this: I used only one piece of fabric (that's the "pocket facing" in the cutting plan) to face the welt opening, then sewed the zipper directly behind it, so the zipper tape is visible on the inside of the completed pocket. Workmanship-wise, this was a total fail, but it served its purpose with its minimal layers, so an overall win.  

Once the welt pocket is finished (or omitted!), line the big Organizer pocket itself. 

Place the RS of the Outer Organizer and Organizer Lining together, align all sides and sew their top edges together (be sure to account for the position of the welt pocket in determining which of the two long sides is the top edge).

Now bring the WS of the two layers together, press open the seam and edge-stitch on the RS through all layers. This is the top edge of the Organizer.

Baste the three remaining sides together.

Lay the Outer Front piece RS up on your work surface and place the Organizer RS up on it. Align the bottom edge and sides, then baste these three sides together.

Finally, sew (I sewed two rows of stitching about 1/8" apart) along the midline of the Organizer through all layers. This attaches the Organizer to the Outer Front along this midline, an effectively divides the Organizer into two separate pockets. 

The Outer Front of the Bag is completed. Set this aside.

STAGE 4: Assemble the Outer Bag

Note: For conciseness, I'll assume everyone knows to sew seams by placing RS of fabric pieces together etc. and omit those instructions in this assembly. Instead, the following sketches will guide you on the orientation of the various parts as they come together to make the outer bag. The construction sequence is that of the classic bucket-style tote (here is an explanation of that). Remember to snip-and-spread the SA of the Outer Front's lower edge when you attach that to the Outer Base. If you're unfamiliar with that concept, visit the tutorial at that link above. The snip-and-spread method of attaching a cylinder to a round base is more precise and when done correctly, produces none of the bunching-and-accidental-pleats that sometimes happen in other methods that try to "match" the SA of rounded edges to straight edges.

In this stage, we'll put together the outer bag from the four pieces

• Outer Front (with Organizer)
• Outer Back (with carabiner Anchors)
• Outer Base
• Strap

in this order:

First, 

attach the Outer Back to the Outer Front along their short sides, inserting the Strap into one of the side seams. The Outer Back and Front now form a loop (or a short, wide cylinder).

Remember that the Strap can be inserted into either side seam, as long as the side of the Strap with the loop tape lies toward the front of the bag, as shown.

Second,  

attach the Outer Base to the bottom opening of the loop/cylinder, aligning the curved edge of the Outer Base with the Outer Front section and the straight edge of the Outer Base with the Outer Back section.

This is the completed outer bag. Set this aside.

STAGE 5: Attach the magnetic snaps (optional but recommended)

The magnetic snaps are attached along the midlines of the Front Lining and Back Lining pieces and 1.5" from the top edge of the fabric (i.e. 1" below the opening of the finished bag, as shown in the diagrams). Install these on the RS of the Front Lining and Back Lining pieces, respectively. Apart from the snaps, the lining layer has no other features. 

STAGE 6: Asssemble the Bag Lining

Follow the instructions in Stage 4 to assemble the Front Lining, Back Lining and Base Lining into the completed bag lining. Omit the Strap, which has already been inserted into the outer bag.

STAGE 7: Make the Hanging Loop (optional)

You'll need a piece of trim or thick grosgrain ribbon that's 1/2" wide and 3-1/2" long. Measure and mark 1" from either end. Fold in half the middle 1-1/2" portion and stitch those two layers together. This creates a narrower, double-thickness section. Set this aside.

STAGE 8: ASSEMBLE THE AIRPLANE BAG

A note about boning: there are many types of boning and unfortunately not all can be used to good effect in this bag. I use rigilene boning, which is bare polyester i.e. a plasticky-thing not enclosed in a fabric sheath. It's stiff enough to hold its shape in the curved opening of the bag (unlike, say, featherlite boning) but still minimalist so that the whole bag rolls tightly without resistance or bulk. This is what it looks like. I usually buy mine by-the-inch at JoAnn. It should also be easily available on Etsy or from other online sources without having to purchase an entire roll.

At the top opening of the outer bag, fold the 1/2" SA to the WS of the fabric and press. Along just the Outer Front piece,  unfold this SA and tuck the boning underneath it so that it curves outward to keep the outer bag open. Re-fold the SA to the WS and use small binder or Clover clips (paper clips can work, too!) to hold the boning in place under the folded SA.

At the top opening of the bag lining, fold the 1/2" SA to the WS and press (if using a fabric that can withstand heat; otherwise finger-press).  Along this folded edge, measure and mark the midpoint of the Back Lining piece - this is where you will attach the Hanging Loop.

Ensure both bag layers are RS out. Insert the bag lining into the outer bag so that their WS are together and those folded SA are sandwiched between the two layers.  Align the folded edges of their openings, matching their respective back pieces and their respective front pieces. On either side of the midpoint of the Back pieces, insert 1/2" of both ends of the Hanging Loop between the two bag layers and hold in place with pins or clips. 

Sew around the bag opening through all the layers to connect the two bags, stitching through the boning and the ends of the Hanging Loop.

Slide the carabiners into the Anchors.

The Airplane Bag is finished! 

Hang by the carabiners to use it,

or roll it (with carabiners still attached, yes) to store.

 

To wash, remove the carabiners, place the Airplane Bag it in a laundry bag, and toss it in the washing machine. I prefer to air-dry these bags but I'm sure they'll hold up in the dryer on the gentle cycle as well (ripstop nylon can withstand the heat).

On Finding Memories and Meaning in Unexpected Places

Last week thereabouts was my Dad's birthday, and were he not forever 75, he would've been 77.

It's interesting how these days sneak up on you, and just as interesting which ones you're able to ride with grace and self-compassion, and which ones kick you in the face, punt you into the air and drop you unceremoniously back at Square One. Grief literature are manifold and varied, but all agree that the first year is brutal (and the second year pretty much the same, only with fewer casseroles and sympathy cards). In the early months, I immersed myself in the fellowships of loss: online forums, support groups and coffee dates and books (Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking was a particularly good read for validation in crazydom). It was deeply helpful to be with others in similar funks but after a while, I felt like I was suffering from death-fatigue and had to take breaks to be normal. Or act normal; I could never really tell which.

But along came the birthdays and anniversaries and public tribute days - those ironic firsts in the Time After. Milestones, the literature called them. Emotional minefields, it further cautioned. Dad's birthday and Father's Day a week later came and went like non-events, possibly because I was still in a stupor from the jetlag and the administrative matters one often has to sort through after a death. My birthday in the summer was surprisingly hard. I later wondered if it was because it was the one event in my life defined by having parents but which, unlike Father's or Mother's Day, was still uniquely and personally mine. Regardless, it blindsided me. I remember being non-functional that day, but not much else. My parents' wedding anniversary in December was sobering, of course, but it was the holiday season, the snow outside was pretty, we were prepping for a trip to Singapore to spend the holidays with my side of the family for the first time in 15 years, and we were busy, busy, busy.

Then, as Christmas drew closer, I fell apart, just as the grief books had so smugly predicted I would. We were losing Auntie Laura, and this trip to Singapore would be when we said our goodbyes. It would also be the first time the kids were in Singapore since Grandpa died and I anticipated revisiting the loss through their eyes, trying to make sense of Grandma's house - and the entirety of their Singapore experience - without him in it. And there were also family in Minnesota we'd wanted to be with, whose lives had not been upended this past year and who were looking forward to celebrating the season and all its traditions with bright, untainted happiness. The enormity of it all - the traveling, the waiting, the planning, the very obligation to anchor in the present while reckoning with past losses and impending farewells - hit me.

So I did the one thing I knew to do (apart from eating obscene amounts of chocolate and running on the treadmill like hunted prey, I mean). I made stuff that reminded me of Dad.

To be fair, almost all the stuff I make have associations to one person or another in my family of origin. I wrote in this post years ago that making keeps me connected to the place and the people who have a profound influence on who I am but whom I very rarely see. It is true that very few of us (who aren't still children, I mean) are living with our families of origin, but unless you have also moved across countries and continents and had to rebuild your identity and communal purpose in a different culture, you are still, to a large extent, home. Sewing, for instance, ties me to both my parents as well as my entire extended family. Each time I draft and sew a garment, I channel Mum, Auntie Laura, grandma and all the other sewing people who passed those skills down through the generations before me. Each time I make a bag, a case, a pouch, I am my father's daughter, designing a thing to meet a specific need, employing principles of geometry and engineering and physics and translating them between media: fabric, cardboard, wood. Making closed the miles between us, made me feel relieved that I hadn't forgotten what it meant to be me, and were the building blocks of new memories to be shared time and again via photos and FaceTime and phone calls home.

Last Christmas, however, was not a time like any other.

Projects like those - things I'd so giddily invented, photographed and blogged about - were often birthed out of a certain level of joy and engagement with the world around me, two aspects of the creative process that are so typically depleted by the grief experience. It was the strangest thing to be in the midst of the quintissential season of decorating and traditions and handmade everythings and wanting to want to make something, but having no emotional energy whatsoever. Then I remembered our little wooden Christmas trees, which the girls and I painted long ago, and suddenly I couldn't think of anything I'd wanted to do more.

So I did.

Even though Advent was the busiest time of the year and painting wooden blanks was the slowest art form in the known galaxy, what with the meticulous layering of the different colors over each other and speckling all the fiddly little details, let alone the drying between coats.

Grief, though, follows its own timeline. And right when my world felt most frenetic, the universe decided that I needed to claim that time - hours I thought I didn't have - and simply paint. I thought of Dad during, and remembered that he was a wonder with wood and a talented painter who made incredible things with just his hands and a few unfancy tools. I thought of Christmas and its symbolic hope for families who were intact and families who weren't. It made me slow down. It made me focus. It made me thankful for the years between those first Christmas trees and these new ones. It made me ascribe meaningfulness to an activity beyond simply feeling indulgent amidst frenzy and overscheduling. 

Interestingly, meaning is a big thing in grief literature. It's been called many names and assigned different roles but the consensus is that it's a goal well worth any effort, whenever and however it's ultimately attained.  Initially, I'd misunderstood that it was imperative to find meaning for the loss itself - why it happened, for instance, or how it might be turned around to benefit others decades down the road. More recently, I'm learning that it has much more to do with the person one has lost, and specifically the relationship one has had with them. 

Among the many things that are challenging in bereavement is the idea that we will never again make new memories after saying goodbye. There is some truth in that. We will never have new experiences together, or even conversations, and thus no new records of those interactions to become new memories. All our shared adventures will, from that point onward, be in the past - old, static and unevolving. Which of course is a odiously depressing situation mitigated only by the rare discovery of a hitherto unseen photograph or videoclip, an unread letter, an unheard story. These become treasures like no other because they are as close as we could ever get to seeing anew the face of our loved one, hearing their voice, or - even for just a moment, being once again with them.  

Here's a story about that - part rabbit trail, part treasure hunt, and - although I didn't know it at the time - a quest for meaning. When I was in Singapore in January for Auntie Laura's funeral, I remembered a book that used to be in my parents' home. It was a book on Chinese paper-cutting which Dad had checked out of the library when I was a child and because he never returned it, sat in our bookcase for years thereafter. The weeks after Dad's death had been full of urgent administrative responsibilities and soaking in Auntie Laura's company with fervent intention but in the quiet after her passing, I found that I was ready to begin collecting memories. Dad had been an artist - how perfect to have one of his paintings hanging in my home, I reasoned. Unfortunately, we'd never owned any  - because Dad was never particularly sentimental about his own work, all his art had long ago been either given away or thrown out with no hope of recovery. Except, perhaps, for one - a mural he'd painted on a school wall when I was a child. That book of papercuts was significant because I thought I remembered a piece in it that Dad had referenced for that project.

Mum and I tore the house upside down looking for that book. Surely we still had it, I reasoned; if the man had defied multiple renewal notices from the library in order to hoard it for decades, he could not possibly have decided to finally return it. Where would have been the fun in that? 

We did not find it. Mum eventually decided he must have given it away, as he had so many other things he'd owned. It was disappointing, but not the end of the world - we were able to reminisce a little, which was comforting, given the circumstances. I flew back to Minnesota after and told the husband about the mural and the sad, lost book.

"Try e-bay," he suggested. 

I was dubious. It's true that E-bay is a source of endless wonder (in more ways than one) but this was an obscure book whose author and title I didn't even remember. We googled it anyway.

And found it - by some insane, ludicrous miracle, some blessedly wonderful person in the United States owned a copy.  

We bought it (of course).

Even though I wasn't sure the artwork was even from this book. I'd been a child, then, and the memory was decades-old, vague and possibly embellished by blind hope in the throes of grief. It could've been my imagination, in other words. It could've been anything. It could've been nothing. 

When the book arrived in the mail, I didn't immediately rip the packaging open; had the memory been in error, this book - and all it didn't contain - would be yet another loss to mourn.

(Or I could live out the rest of my life with an untaken risk and never know.)

No brainer. 

I ripped open the packaging.

And there it was. 

What strange relief to know I hadn't misremembered the story after all: Dad had just received a posting to start a brand new elementary school with a group of his teacher-colleagues. He was the new art coordinator and one of his assignments was to make the school beautiful and give it a personality within the community. This piece of monochrome art became a vivid mural on one of the school walls. On weekends and over the school vacations, he painted it, mostly alone but sometimes another teacher friend would stop by to help. Occasionally, he'd take my brother and me with him and we would to paint it, too. 

A picture of the finished mural would've been a nice keepsake, something to frame and hang on a wall to remember Dad by, but we didn't even own a camera till years later. And taking a photo now with the fancypants cameras I do own is impossible because the mural itself no longer exists. That school building had long been demolished to make way for another bigger and more modern one. The brand new elementary school of which my Dad was part of the pioneer staff merged its population with another some years back, which then become part of an even bigger elementary school in a different part of the country. I wrote to the principal of that new school but I didn't hear back. Not surprising - it's extremely unlikely that she'd retain photographic records of a school wall whose history was two generations removed from her own. All trails, it seemed, were stone cold. 

But perhaps not on the internet. After all, one could hope, nothing ever disappears from the internet, right? 

Initial searches of "mural" and "picture" and the name of the school yielded zilch in Google's extensive database of images. But a photo of a group of students in the school uniform led to a link in someone's writeup of schools long extinct, which referenced a library archive, which unearthed this:

photo credit: National Library Board, Singapore

It was the electronic version of a print magazine which doubled as the program of the opening ceremony of that brand new elementary school.

The cover of which - and the school crest - my Dad had designed. My brother and I laughed about it after as we swopped stories. He remembered Dad confessing later that he hadn't actually been crazy about the school motto, despite having it printed on report books and T-shirts and water bottles. I remembered the paint and pens and transfer sheets he'd used to ink and set the lettering and artwork, so laborious and fiddly a process to imagine now that we have computers and fonts and page editors. I'd forgotten all that - and seeing my Dad's work on that cover was like being transported home - the home of the past when we were little, with all our lives ahead of us. 

Fascinating - and gratifying to see - though the cover was, I plowed through the rest of the magazine, looking for something more. There was a bio of Dad on one of the pages, accompanied by an unrecognizable photograph. There was a group shot of the entire staff - I managed to find Dad in the front row, in very dated clothes and in desperate need of a makeover. And then, toward the end, when there weren't nearly enough pages left to contain anything of value, my heart stilled.

There was the mural. It wasn't finished. 

photo credit: National Library Board, Singapore

But - oh, wonder of wonders - there was my Dad, painting it. 

photo credit: National Library Board, Singapore

I cannot adequately describe that moment of seeing it. There were immediate questions: was this taken after my brother and I had joined in, and if so, which parts of the mural could we take artistic credit for? When in the day had we painted it? Did we stop for lunch? Did we take breaks to run around the courtyard and explore the building? How many times were we there? Was it Dad's idea to include us or did we wear him down with begging? Did he hold his breath each time we touched our paint brushes to the wall, bracing himself for a blot wrongly placed, a stroke imperfectly executed?

There was an avalanche of emotion, too. A deep, profound sadness for those questions which would forever be without answers, because only Dad would've known them. But also thrill and delight: I'd found the mural and behold - if it was real, all the other early memories I had of Dad were likely accurate, too, and would be mine for keeps. 

Days later, I shared this story on Facebook. An old friend responded  - I hadn't known it before, but he'd been a student of that elementary school, and he had a funny story to tell about my Dad. On a whim, I asked if he remembered that mural.

Of course, he said, everyone who was a student at the school probably did. And everyone posed for the camera in front of it. It was the backdrop for class photos, sports team photos, music club photos and the like.

Perchace, I asked, did he still have any of those photos?

Why yes, he did. And he sent them to me.

Here is my Dad's mural, finished. 

photo credit: Pete Choi

photo credit: Pete Choi

I noticed two things.

One, it wasn't the same picture from the book. Almost, but not quite. As he'd been asked to do, Dad had reimagined it for the school and its multicultural neighborhood. Where the original art depicted Chinese fisherwomen, 

in Dad's mural, they are of different races. 

Two, the photo doesn't show the full mural. According to my friend, Dad added a fisherman walking ahead of the group of women - the end of the stick he's carrying on his shoulder is visible on the right of the photo below. What did he look like? Why was he added? What was his race? Was that, like the decision to represent the community among the women, similarly significant?  

And what does it mean that I have more questions than ever before?

photo credit: Pete Choi

I believe that this is meaningfulness. Not in the composition of a piece of art but in the enduring impact it has even after its maker is gone. Not in the finding of the perfect sentimental artifact but in the exhilaration of the search. Not in the quality of the closure but in the value of the process - because even a memory has a beginning, a middle and an end and is therefore itself a story worth telling.

And ultimately not even in the memory itself but the person about whom the memory is, whose life has been a map of those playful twists and unexpected turns, and whose company, for as long as it was on loan to me, was one of fullness and joy.

Lavender Chai and Gouache Kits: An Update

Some fun updates today!

First, Emily has added a new mini painting kit to her Etsy store, called Sunflowers!

She, Kate and some of their friends have been painting beautiful things with it. I love seeing each girl's creativity turning the same colors into four very different pictures.

(L-R, top row: Emily, Kate; bottom row: Mary, Riley)

Second, while on the subject of variation, Emily has been revisiting her kits and making some new art with them. When she first launched her kits, she'd only had time to paint a single sample for each. Since then, she's been playing around with a couple of the kits - same colors, different outcomes -  to inspire you to run with your ideas and see where they'll take you.

Here is her Sunset kit, with the original landscape art and a new painting of our cat Milo in a field of wheat.

This is her Galaxy kit, with the original astro sample and new unicorn art.

Third, inspiration line art. If you'd thought, "how nice it'd be if there were a guided picture of sorts to follow along with as I paint," you're not alone. It's always nice to have a starting point! In response to requests for line sketches to accompany the kits, Emily made black-and-white drawings of her sample paintings that you can download to have next to you as you paint. Or, if you'd bought kits as gifts, to print and send to their recipients. 

Finally, and most exciting: Emily now has a blog, where she writes about painting, the materials and media she uses, other aspects of her process, and other fun things she likes to do that are hard to share on instagram. You can find links to her Etsy shop there, as well as those aforementioned printable PDFs. Fresh off the press is a lovely tutorial on painting outdoors and on the road with helpful tips on working with paint and some links to the supplies she uses. 

You can also find that line art printable on her blog, under the Freebies tab:

I hope you'll stop by and say hello!

Introducing an online drafting course

Thank you, everyone, for your thoughtful comments to my last post. Forgive me for being slow in responding - my heart is full of things that make it hard to write these days. We've been experiencing new levels of craziness here in MN with the rioting and general unease in our neighborhoods. Which is happening at the same time that the kids are finishing virtual school and dealing with the strange mix of emotions that come with it. Earlier this week we picked up the contents of their school lockers, which their teachers had emptied out and consolidated in grocery sacks on their behalf. There was much exclaiming as the kids unpacked them at home - they were like time capsules, full of mementos of a school year that had gotten lost on its way to the finish line. Our middle school principal is retiring this year, and informed us while we were at home during the lockdown. Like so many graduating seniors, he's saying goodbye quietly and without fanfare. It will be strange to return to school in the fall and not see him there - but stranger still to not have a memory of a send-off to celebrate and thank him for decades of patient and smiling service to the school, the kids and the education system. 

And then there's the news these days. So visceral. So frustratingly, mind-bogglingly painful to watch. So heart-rending to contemplate that with all the loss inherent in the natural order of life, we would add to that by our own actions and words. Bereavement, displacement, isolation, security, justice, a hijacked spring and uncertain summer - some days my spirit is heavy for all the grief around me. Other days I am hopeful that this, too, shall pass and when it does, may I not have wasted the lessons. May they have made me slower to judge and speak. May they have convinced me that I really don't know as much as I thought I did.

I know that at least for a while, Dad and Auntie Laura are going to be on my mind front and center, and from time to time, I might process that here on the blog. It probably won't be as raw, mainly because I'm not the same person now that I was when I wrote those two tributes. I am forever and profoundly changed, but some days I actually do feel a little like old zany LiEr and just being able to acknowledge that is hugely uplifting for me. 

That said, let's keep moving forward!

I'm very excited to introduce a new online drafting course authored by my good friend Daljeet! You guys know her by her nickname Jen - yes, that Jen who co-wrote my drafting series Sew From Scratch here on ikatbag in 2010:

Some context here might be helpful. Long-time readers of this blog will know that we cover an eclectic selection of stuff on ikatbag. I'll go as far as to say that most of that stuff is sewing-related and the sewn projects are split between garments, bags and some toys. Some of you might also remember that I don't work with commercial patterns and instead draft my own whenever I need to make something to wear. You can read more about it here. Sew From Scratch was a series of foundational drafting tutorials for children's slopers and garments which I wrote to share my garment-making method. I was fortunate to collaborate with Daljeet on a few of those posts. She and I grew up with a similar sewing philosophy but while I was informally mentored by Mum, Aunt Laura and (posthumously) my grandmother who taught them,  Daljeet pursued garment-making independently and eventually made a profession of it. I have fond memories of Sew from Scratch, not only because it reunited us virtually (she in Malaysia and I in the US) but also for how I was able to focus and dissect my thoughts alongside someone with such rich and varied experience. 

When Sew From Scratch ended, people wrote to ask if I'd do another drafting series for women which included bust darts and all the other front-bodice stuff missing from children's drafts. I sat on it (of course) - and then years, later, I kinda sorta did: 

It was probably not at all what you guys were expecting, and I'd bet most of you don't even remember it apart from a couple of the more popular posts on sleeves and darts. It wasn't methodical or even systematic; I meandered all over the place talking about whatever I fancied on any particular day, and became quite rabid toward the end about transforming one kind of sloper to another. Even if you were already possessed of some drafting experience, you likely reacted along the lines of, "Um." (I wouldn't be surprised if true beginners simply just clawed their eyes out.)

I have good news for you! Brand-new and just-launched on the online platforms Udemy and Teachable, behold: Daljeet's drafting course 

Drafting Basics 1

How to Draft a Basic Bodice Block (Sloper)

Which, happily, is both methodical and systematic. And satisfyingly linear - Daljeet literally takes you from the very beginning (here are the tools, this is how and what you measure) to a working sloper - or basic block - for a woman's upper body based on your own measurements.

Let's unpack!

WHAT

Here is the course overview, which tells you what you can expect to take away from the course:

• How to draft a basic bodice pattern from your own measurements (with step-by-step instructions).
• All the basic (must-have) & optional (good-to-have) tools for pattern drafting.
• How to determine & calculate Front & Back body dimensions for drafting (and why).
• How to create & rotate/pivot darts (and why).

Here is the course preview video, taken from the Udemy site (link in later paragraph). There is a similar one on the Teachable site.

WHO

Next, target users - the people for whom this course was designed: 

• Home seamstresses
• Fashion design students
• Sewing enthusiasts
• Professionals in the fashion or dressmaking industry

Those among us who've received drafting instruction from the typical sources (books and other courses, for instance) will likely find the course overview very familiar. After all, this is how we begin to draft, and all decent drafting resources must include techniques for accurately measuring of a real human body and meaningfully translating those measurements onto paper so that they faithfully represent the contours of that same human body. Beyond that, however, drafting resources can vary in their origin, focus and target users. For instance, some are written by and for the fashion industry and focus on the commercial production of clothing for arbitrary dimensions in graded sizes. Others are primarily inspirational - because their goal is application, they begin with pre-existent templates and focus on adapting them into garment patterns in varying styles, discussing drafting principles on the side as they deconstruct fit. Most common are the resources that fall somewhere in-between and feel like they'd be perfect textbooks for a drafting course - substantial enough to guide a persistent and adventurous seamstress enough of the way toward making her (or his) first muslin but not quite intuitive enough without a human teacher to connect some of the dots.  

Daljeet wrote this course for the home seamstress who wants to draft from real body dimensions. She's been sewing about as long as I have, with the bulk of her work in commercial garment-making. As a custom tailor, she's also sewn for customers with a variety of body shapes and sizes. She's designed her own ready-to-wear fashion lines and produced samples for those of other designers. She's taught and mentored students one-on-one as a drafting and sewing instructor. The drafting method she'd developed and now shares in her course is the result of more than a decade of that professional experience, not to mention the years of research and experimentation before sewing became her career. 

This course teaches foundational materials, meaning that it stands alone and does not require prior drafting knowledge. If you can draw lines, use a ruler and measuring tape, and have spatial and visual sense, you can learn to draft. That said, you will most benefit if you already have a very basic understanding of how a pattern generally becomes a garment. Many people who have sewn any kind of garment will already have this knowledge. They will, for instance, be aware that garments may have darts, and of how to sew one closed. And they will know what a neckline or armscye looks like on paper and be unsurprised that sleeves are connected to armholes and necklines belong to collars (if any). If you are familiar with the idea of garment-making from a pattern, even if you haven't yet successfully made a garment, you should do just fine. 

HOW

The format is slideshow (rather than live-video), is about 30 mins long and organized into 11 modules.

Section 1: Welcome

Section 2: Introduction

• Resources you need to draft (equipment, etc.)

Section 3: All About Measurements

• Tips for measuring

• Where to measure

• Adding ease

• Taking measurements

Section 4: Drafting

• Calculations for drafting (using the free interactive worksheet)

• Drafting the front bodice

• Drafting the back bodice

Section 5: Refining the Blocks

• Refining the blocks - dart rotation, centering the waist dart, truing all darts

• Next steps

Each module is an instructional clip ranging from 1 to 8 minutes and packed with succinct information, and by "succinct", I mean you won't be wasting time watching someone ramble on about how drafting will forever change your life; we've all watched our fill of YouTube videos whose first 10 minutes of preamble we've fast-forwarded to get to the actual 2 minutes of useful material right at the end. Apart from the first two modules introducing the necessary drafting equipment (which many drafting people probably already own), you won't even think of skipping over stuff. In fact, you're going to be regularly hitting the pause button as you follow along and construct your own draft. Nothing is superfluous; everything is well-paced and clearly presented. Rather than tells, Daljeet demonstrates how she obtains each measurement and how that measurement is computed into a workable variable and turned into a line on the draft. 

There's no frustrating guesswork or arbitrary plotting - it's geometry and mathematics but she does the work, not you. The process is so much fun to watch in her videoclips - all the numerical values coming together as lines and then seams in the eventual bodice block. 

If you're less interested in the why (or you just want to get to the plotting already), she provides an interactive worksheet that takes care of the computation for you. All that's required is to download the worksheet and enter the raw measurements taken off the body - the algorithms will manipulate the data so that you can accurately and easily plot them on your draft. 

In addition to the interactive measurement worksheet, there are PDF notes accompanying the individual modules to download, print out and scribble your own learning points on as you watch the clips. There is also an option to make notes digitally within the course platform, see notes made by other students and ask Daljeet questions. 

HOW TO ENROLL

You can find Daljeet's course here on Udemy:

and also here on Teachable.

The course retails at USD$50 but is available to the first 100 participants at the special price of $24.99.

You'll find all the course info on both Udemy and Teachable The websites themselves are a little fiddly to navigate - you won't find the course easily by browsing or even searching by instructor's name. The best way to access the course is to use the links above, which Daljeet has also listed on her blog. 

LOOKING FORWARD

While Drafting Basics 1 is a stand-alone course, there are several others in progress to help you apply what you've learned from it. Daljeet is currently working on more advanced courses on drafting a sheath dress block, a skirt block, sleeves and facings - you can check Daljeet's blog The Measuring Tape for updates.

If you have any questions for Daljeet, you can write them in a comment to this post (below) or hop over to her blog to reach her directly. 

Happy drafting!