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Well this is my third attempt to make Amy Butler's Weekender and be happy with it. It's one of those things where you think the fabric you've picked is just perfect for a project and by the time you finish you're not so sure. And a few weeks later you can't stand it and wonder what you were thinking when you picked it in the first place. And you regret all that hard work you did to make something you don't really like.

But this bag is really great, it's such a perfect size and is just what you need for short trips (and good for cramming in extra stuff such as knitting and books) and is also great for a carry-on bag. And I wanted to start making one now well before I'm rushing to get ready for a trip so maybe I could do a really good job on it and not cut corners.

So the last weekender I made was a plaid upholstery fabric in a caramel kind of colour with pink piping. I'm not going to link back to it or anything because I grew to hate it. So I unpicked it recently (might as well re-use the zipper and cord) and decided to try again.
I bought some new Michael Miller fabric (pictured above) from Tonic Living but after a couple of days I wasn't sure about it for the bag although it may look great on our dining room chairs someday. I still like the fabric, I don't know why but I just didn't want it for the weekender bag anymore. This blue floral was my other choice, which I may still use someday. I bought a sample piece and it's nice and thick and has a kind of nautical freshness that I like.

So in the end I decided on a fabric I already had in my stash, a thick white linen with a grey fish pattern on it that I think will look elegant although not extra practical since it has a white background. But there's all that detail and dots and things so maybe it will be ok. And the bottom is going to be dark grey twill which is very practical and the part that gets the most wear. But the main thing is I think it's really pretty and it inspired me to go ahead finally. I hope it works out, I took a lot of time thinking about fabric combinations and even Photoshopped new fabric choices onto a photo of the bag so I could try and picture it. This version looks like this:
The straps and piping are made with dark brown cotton (from the Workroom) and the base is dark grey twill. I'm going to line it with very sturdy cream coloured canvas material. I found a huge piece at Goodwill and thought it might be useful for something that really needed structure. Which this bag does. And as you know if you've tried, local shops look at you like you're crazy if you ask for Timtex. Last time I substituted buckram, but I forgot about that this time and just bought some fusible interfacing which is not as sturdy. (I used two strips of interfacing for each strap and they turned out well.) So in short I'm hoping the canvas lining will compensate. We'll see!

Poetry and Nature go together like espresso and biscotti, like John and Paul, like tomatoes and garlic. Jane Yolen and Jason Stemple explore the symmetry of nature and verse in their lovely new picture book Shape Me A Rhyme: Natures Form in Poetry.

Shape Me A Rhyme works on two levels. Yolen's straightforward, beautiful verse and Stemple's bold, bright photography make Shape Me A Rhyme perfect for reading aloud to a very young child. Its creative approach to shapes and poetry means this book would work equally well as part of a grade school unit on shapes, nature, or poetry.

Each two-page spread in Shape Me A Rhyme is devoted to one shape. Yolen and Stemple cover the circle, triangle, coil, star, square, heart, arch, wave, oval, fan, rectangle, and crescent in their exploration of shapes in nature. Yolen's subtle humor is present throughout, as in this poem devoted to the square:

A shadow square
Upon a frond
Resides beside
A quiet pond.

Since nature rarely
Seeds a square,
We must make do
With what is there.

How cleanly these lines read, comprising in their sound and meaning the stoic square.

Accompanying Stemple's dynamic photos and Yolen's verse are related words in different fonts scattered about the page. The square, for example, is accented with "block," "tetragon," "quadrate," and "quadrangle."

Read Shape Me A Rhyme to a child today. There's much to discuss--from poetry to natural forms--in its pages.
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Other blog reviews:

5 Minutes for Mom
KidsLit
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Cloudscome is hosting at A Wrung Sponge today. Check out her Found Poetry experiment. I'm going to try this at the rink tomorrow and I'll report back over the weekend.