A Jen Too Many

I ran across the Jitter Bucket pattern quite a while ago and salivated over it for months. I even asked for it for my birthday. (With no luck. I don't remember what I got instead, but it wasn't the bucket pattern.) Then my local JoAnn's held a pattern sale (I love to get patterns at 99 cents each!) and I ran across a very similar pattern.

I was happy, happy, happy! Until I got home and tried to make sense of the directions. Oh, my.

Now, I have been sewing for nearly three decades (and boy, doesn't that statement make me feel old.) I even have a degree in Home Economics.* I know my way around a pattern. In fact, I don't even bother with a pattern 90% of the time anymore. I just measure and cut, eyeballing where necessary. Because I know how to sew.**

But I couldn't figure this pattern out. I have never run into worse directions in my life. I couldn't make heads or tails out of it. So I did what I should have done months before. I made it up. (If you don't like my way of doing this, or if you want an actual pattern, you can find a free one here.

I measured the height of the 5 gallon bucket I was planning on using, doubled the result and added a few inches to allow enough fabric to cover the inside bottom and overlap the outer base. Then I decided to add enough fabric to make a pocket on the inside, too. (I can't give you the actual numbers - sorry - because I made this awhile ago, and can't remember anymore. And I really don't feel like measuring everything again. Besides, whatever bucket you use will be a different size anyway.) I measured around the bucket, then, and (adding an inch for two 1/2" seam allowances) used that as the measurement for my width. I wound up with a large rectangle. (Yes, the bucket tapers. I ignored that. If I had tried to taper the fabric I wouldn't have been able to pull this over the top, which is wider than the bottom. I wanted to be able to wash this, so I made it fully removable. There is a little extra fabric at the bottom, but it's really not an issue.)

The first thing I sewed was a row of elastic that was meant to tuck under the base of the bucket. Then I did some more measuring and decided where to put the outer pockets. (I did all of this on the flat piece of fabric.) I made the pockets out of some leftover fabric scraps and ribbon that I had.

As you can see, I used tucks to form the pockets on the bottom row, and gathers for the upper row of pockets. The pink row of ribbon is hiding a length of elastic that I placed to fit into the top rim, where the lid would ordinarily have snapped on. I wanted something to hold the slipcover up, and help keep everything in place even when the bucket was empty. (If you click on the picture you'll get a better / larger view to see how I stitched everything.) I sewed the bottom of the pockets first, then did the stitching between the individual pockets.

I measured again, and folded up my base fabric to stitch the inner pockets. (I goofed a little on my measurements there, as I found when I went to figure out just where to stitch the bottom.) Then I sewed up the side seam, forming a tube, matching the pockets and ribbon as I went. And then I finally got to put what I'd done so far onto the bucket and gloat! (Always my favorite part of sewing. It's still amazing to me how you can take a 2 dimensional sheet of fabric and construct something so very three dimensional.***)

The fabric didn't exactly meet at the bottom (oops), so I wound up using more of the pink ribbon to make up the difference. I pinned it in place, then pulled the fabric back off the bucket and wrestled the whole mass onto my sewing machine, where I stitched around the edges of the ribbon with brown thread, kind of making it up as I went. (I think it turned out reasonably well. It's at the bottom anyway, so who cares?) As you can see, I arranged the fabric on the bottom so that the seams went from one corner to the other. The idea was to have them make an X shape. Ah, well.

This is the completed bucket. I gave it to my daughters for their multitudinous Barbie dolls. Unfortunately, the Barbies never seem to actually get put away in there, and there are still far too many weeping sessions over not being able to find various essential Barbie clothing accessories. Shoes especially. (I obviously am much better at sewing than teaching my children to be organized. I didn't even have to empty this out to take pictures of it. I just retrieved it from where it was lying on its side, half-buried in toys.****)

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*Yeah. My secret shame. I actually took two years out of my life to get an Associate's degree in Home Economics. It all happened because I thought, when I graduated from high school, that I had to make a decision right then about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. My dad always said that if you made a career out of what you were good at you'd be happy, and I knew I was good at sewing, so... It wasn't until a few years later that I realized I was good at other things, too. Like writing. And scientific research. And designing print layouts, and eyeballing distance / proportion, and estimating job costs, and typing, and organizing everything but my own home. Many of them things that tie into the same skills that make me good at sewing. Only I was young, and too dumb to realize that. Hence the Home Ec.

**Ironically, in all the things that I have learned over the course of my life, the things I have found most useful were things I never expected. Sewing is one of them. Sewing is, hands down, one of my top three useful skills. Especially now that I have little girls, and I can rarely find them clothes at the store that don't seem to be designed for streetwalkers.

***Once, years ago, I was trying to understand topology and I ran into something called a Klein bottle. It's what you get if you take a Moebius strip and add a dimension. Now, being as this was back in ancient times, and there was no such thing as the Internet yet, I couldn't find a picture of one to help me wrap my mind around the concept. So I made one out of fabric. It was very helpful and I was able to grasp the concept immediately. Unfortunately, that was as far as I ever got in understanding topology. While I still think it's all very cool, my brain is simply not equipped to handle that kind of higher math and if I try to push myself melted stuff starts trickling out of my ears, which is very messy and hard to clean out of my hair.

**** Note to self: Find a way to reduce the number of toys in this house, without triggering hysteria. Vitally important not to trigger hysteria. Remember that.