Members Sheilajeanne Posted October 9, 2018 Members Report Posted October 9, 2018 One of the other boards I belong to has a 'kvetching' thread for life's non-life threatening annoyances. Wish we had one here! Soo, the backstory - you may remember I was looking for Tandy's Molly tote bag for a number of months, and was extremely pleased to find one in the local Tandy's a couple of months ago. Tandy has discontinued this particular bag, so I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to find one. I completed the basic tooling fairly quickly, dyed and antiqued everything, then got stuck as I wanted to put some pockets and a liner in it, but couldn't decide the best way of going about it. Did I just want to hang a pouch and some card slots on one side of the bag, or was I going to go for a full liner? Did I want to put a divider in? All this had to be decided before completing the assembly. I finally decided to go with a full liner, to be installed after the bag was fully assembled. Last night was the last push to finish the stitching. This morning, I went to put the handles on. Uh-oh. Now I think I know why Tandy discontinued this bag. The idiots who were responsible for cutting out the pattern can't do a decent job! The holes for the handles are so close to the center panel that the two pieces of leather overlap each other! I got one end of one handle sewed in place, then ripped it out, and tried to figure out just what to do. If I used my strap cutter to shave a piece off each side of the strap, I'd not only come dangerously close to the stitching holes, I'd also have to refinish the edges of the strap. I removed the top 2" of stitching, then tried cutting out a piece of the center panel next to the strap. Didn't like it. It's a dangerous route to go, as a slip of the knife would permanently damage the appearance of the bag. (The center panel is the one with the nice tooling on it, too, so don't want to take chances.) Well, there is a third option. The picture on the box shows the center panel lying on top of the two side panels, so of course, that's how I did the assembly. If I totally rip out the stitching on this panel, and resew it underneath the side panels, my problem will be solved. It will also hide the chunk I shaved out of the panel. It will be a PITA to do, but it can be done without ripping out ALL of the stitching. I just need to remove the stitching on each side, and enough of the bottom stitching that I can knot the thread once the center panel is removed. Thinking some REALLY bad thoughts about Tandy right now... this is NOT going to be fun! Quote
Contributing Member JLSleather Posted October 9, 2018 Contributing Member Report Posted October 9, 2018 If it helps, I have purchased those "kits" and found out too late that the carving back and the liner didn't have the same number of holes.. so there was never a chance they were going to line up. Now, WHY I didn't check that BEFORE tooling... never crossed my mind. SINCE then, I have purchased those kits FOR THE LINER, pitch out the carving leather back and replace with my own, chase the liner holes onto the replacement leather. Sounds excessive (cuz it is) but better option than buying purse frames and the tools to install them.. when I only need one or two. Quote "Observation is 9/10 of the law." IF what you do is something that ANYBODY can do, then don't be surprised when ANYBODY does.
Members Sheilajeanne Posted October 9, 2018 Author Members Report Posted October 9, 2018 JLS, one small consolation is I got the bag kit at approximately half the usual price, as it was discontinued. That was one of the reasons I didn't buy it before: even when it was on sale, the kit was usually around $90, then when I checked to see if I had all the tools I needed, I discovered there were something like THIRTEEN tools that I didn't even own yet! By the time I'd accumulated the required tools, they'd taken the bag out of production, and I couldn't find one! I just REALLY liked that paisley pattern, though, so I kept hoping I'd stumble across one somewhere. And now that I have it, I've made templates out of cardboard, so I can do the bag again whenever I want! Need to go back to my template, and move those strap holes, though!! Quote
Members Sheilajeanne Posted October 9, 2018 Author Members Report Posted October 9, 2018 Doesn't suprise me, JLS! Their two-pocket coin purse (now also discontinued) had holes that were hellish hard to line up, and they did NOT tell you which hole to start your stitching with! I had to rip the whole thing out and start over again, twice, because I was a hole or two out on matching the inner and outer pieces together! Also the inner flap on some of the purses had the snap fastener installed the wrong way - dome side out, when it should have been the male side out! No biggie - I will just cut my own flap when I decide to do one of these purses! It's just a small piece of leather, and the clear-out price was too hard to resist, so I bought a bunch of them! Quote
Members YinTx Posted October 9, 2018 Members Report Posted October 9, 2018 I saw an awesome creative Paisley guitar strap the other day. I would think you could come up with your own Paisley pattern anytime. If you go to his IG you can probably get a higher resolution image to see better how he did it. YinTx Quote YinTx https://www.instagram.com/lanasia_2017/ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK6HvLWuZTzjt3MbR0Yhcj_WIQIvchezo
Members Sheilajeanne Posted October 10, 2018 Author Members Report Posted October 10, 2018 (edited) Yin Tix, very nice! And i did get creative with the paisley pattern, and did not stamp exactly the way I was supposed to. Once you have the paisley figures outlined, you can do pretty well whatever you please with them. You can definitely see the difference in crispness between my Tandy tools, and whatever tools the maker of that strap used: Edited October 10, 2018 by Sheilajeanne Quote
Members Handstitched Posted October 10, 2018 Members Report Posted October 10, 2018 22 hours ago, Sheilajeanne said: Thinking some REALLY bad thoughts about Tandy right now... this is NOT going to be fun! You're not the only one. They know nothing about ' continuity ' . http://leatherworker.net/forum/topic/82275-tandy-catalogue-from-australia/ (go to my latest post) HS Quote ' I have a very gweat friend in Wome called Biggus Dickus, He has a wife you know, do you know whats she's called? Incontinentia.......Incontinentia Buttocks '
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