Sewing A Strap for A Messenger Bag

Video Transcript

"Now that we have the fabric cut out for the strap of the purse. You'll remember that we did 6 inches wide and 39 inches long so it can be finished at 37 inches long and 5 inches wide. And in order to make the strap 5 inches wide what we're going to do is get the fabric and just put right sides together. This fabric you can't really tell because the right sides and wrong sides look the same so I'm not really concerned about it. But your fabric might not be this way. You just want to make sure that the right side of the fabric is on the inside. So you put right sides together, that's basically what that means is laying across each other. And then I'm just going to start sewing it. But before I start sewing I'm going to get my ruler and make sure that this strap is going to be 2 1/2 inches from the edge to where I sew. And we're going to leave a half inch seam allowance that we're going to press out after this. Okay, so from where my needle is to the edge of the fabric over here is 2 1/2. In most sewing machines, most likely your sewing machine too, has marks on it and you can just catch a mark. So I know from here to right here on the edge of my sewing machine is 2 1/2. I don't have to go through and remeasure the whole time. I'm just going to go ahead and sew. Start right here and back stitch. Well, that happens a lot so we just have to re-thread it. It wont take but a second. It actually happens a lot and if you're a seamstress you know that. It comes out so many times. So anyways lets start this again. Let's back tack right here. And so this is my edge. I'm just going to make sure that fold is right there on the edge the whole time when I sew. And I also need to make sure these guys meet right there on top of each other. And just hold it and sew. And we're going to sew all the way to the end just like this. And just keep folding it over and holding it against it just to make sure. There we go. I like to come and just hold it, press it flat, then we just pull it a little bit. And this is the inside of the strap and this isn't going to show at all. There we go. And then if you've got it cut a little bit more wider than 6 inches this is where you take out the extra fabric and make sure that it's just 2 1/2 inches. So, here we go. Get it flat. Here we come to the end and what we want to do is make sure you back tack because we don't want that coming loose when we're trying t flip it out to the right side. And now that we have this sewn what we're going to do next is go ahead and iron this seam open. Just like that. But let's get the iron ready and we'll show you how to do that in the next clip."