Troubleshooting PAL Design

{all prior Pouch Along links can be found here}

So...hopefully by this point you have gotten along a bit in your design and creation of your pouch.  If not, no worries, this post can still be helpful!

I thought about it and decided I should do a "troubleshooting" post to kind of highlight some things that you might want to consider tweaking along the way.

Angles
Alright so a few of you have asked about angles.  So let's look at their purpose.  The angles are really to give your pouch design that pinched look.  When the design of the pouch goes IN at the hinges?  As I see it...the waist of the pouch.

Like so:

source

Does that mean you have to have them?  Absolutely not!  If you'd like your pouch to be straighter at the sides then by all means have your angles echo the shape of the frame and voila it will appear straight down and continue the shape of the frame when you sew it all up.

Like so:

source

Overall?  The wider your angles the more of a waist you are going to give your pouch.  It is up to you how Jessica Rabbit you want to go!

Length
When I advised you about creating your template I suggested making the body of your template larger as opposed to smaller.  I wrote that you would be able to make it smaller...but not necessarily add fabric!

So what happened to that advice?  Well, my apologies, I didn't need to alter my design and therefore didn't have a chance to show you how to alter yours.

Let's say you go through the step of sewing your exterior and interior templates.  You put them together...and when you imagine or hold up your frame to them you think oh my, my pouch body is out of proportion for my frame!  No problem...you would do what you would do when altering any piece of clothing...flip your pieces inside out to reveal the seams and draw new ones.  You can start by basting it and altering your design bit by bit (maybe 1/2" at a time?) until you have a successful shape!

Of course the trick to doing this is to make sure however you alter your shape don't change the non-negotiable section and be sure to remember that your frame will take up some of the top so take that into account when designing!

That is all I can think of at the moment.  But, let me know if you have any questions and we can happily brainstorm!

- rebecca lynne