My daughters just inherited a Vera Bradley backpack from their cousin. Do they need another VB bag of any kind? No. Do they want it? Yes. : ) I noticed the corners were frayed and the plastic inside the edge binding was showing. Of course, being the project fanatic that I am, it was time for me to figure out how to fix it : )
It was actually very simple and I am by no means a seamstress. Do I know how to use a sewing machine? Yes. Do I have anything more than one needle and one presser foot? No. So this is beginner stuff.
I decided I would simply re-round the corners to get the frayed edges inside of a seam. First I decided to cut off the plastic edging. It wouldn't be necessary once the corners were inside the corner seam, and they would just get in the way when I was sewing. Here is what it looked like after I cut the plastic off
Second, I turned the bag inside out (as I would be sewing from the inside). I then took pins and marked where the fraying started and stopped on each corner.
I transferred those points onto the inside fabric with pencil (this is hard to see from the pic, but its on the white part). This helped me remember what points needed to be included in the seam.
I then sewed each corner in. I started and stopped sewing about a 1/2" outside of each pencil mark. For those of you who don't know how to sew at all, you start your seam off the fabric, go in and them come back off the fabric at the end. In this case I didn't go all the way off over the edge binding. I just went off the brown fabric onto the edging and stopped. I went in about 1/2" from the original seam by the time I was in the middle (remember your seam is progressive from edge to edge, starting off the fabric...building to 1/2" in from the original seam by the time you get to the middle...then gradually going back off the fabric). These notes are for beginning sewers obviously. Hopefully the picture shows what I am referring to. Its really hard to see eventhough I used white thread.
Once I sewed all four corners, it was like a new bag. These two pics show two corners after they were sewn. In the second one you can see where the edge binding is showing on each side, but sewn in at the middle.
There was some fraying on the bottom of the backpack straps as well, but I decided to leave that alone. I wasn't about to cut the straps off and resew them back on further down. I also didn't was to tear open the bag to accomplish a reattachment properly More experienced sewers might be willing to, but I'm more inclinded to wrap them with a solid fabric to hide them. That's for another day : ) Just wanted to fix the obvious beaten corners.
Hope this gives you the courage to try this quick fix : )
