Hand embroidered Bag

Yet another birthday gift!  Today I am showing you a small bag I made for my friend.  I used applique, hand embroidery and tried to not over embellish.

 The bag is made from and lined with cotton and the tree trunk is also cotton.  I made the dangling leaves by bondawebbing some of the red and brown cotton scraps together and machining veins on to it in leaf shapes.

 The leaves on the tree are lazy daisy stitches, one inside another in a variety of thread colours.

 The strap is adjustable (my first ever adjustable strap!) and the bag closes with a metal snap. 

Next week I hope to show off a collaborative project I worked on as a special welcome to a very young lady who has just made it into the world!

A Hanging Pocket

So, it's birthday gift time again here!  The one I'm showing you today was made for a friend who loves beading.  And hand embroidery.  And machine embroidery!  So I went searching for a gift idea to use one of the above and managed to get inspiration to combine all three!

This is a hanging pocket, to pop bits and pieces you want handy in.  I used cotton, cotton wadding and taffeta to make it, with bias binding scraps.

The embroidery and bead work was done by hand, I sketched a quick design and then let my imagination fill n the details as I stitched.  All the beads were bought in Wales on a holiday we went on together.

To make it sturdy, the back section of the pocket is quilted with a swirly machine backing.

All in all, I am quite pleased with it!  I have a little more embroidery to show off on Thursday.

Sometimes It's the Little Things...

I got bored of always losing the camera SD card adaptor.  So I made this.

It's a tiny pouch thing.  Under the lady bird is an eyelet to strengthen the fabric as it's pinned to my notice board.

It's made of tiny scraps of blue linen and took all of 15 minutes to sew.  Makes me grin every time I see it though and best of all, now I don't have to hunt for the adaptor every time I want to take photos off my camera!

Have a great weekend!

Kit Storage

So, I don't know about the rest of you, but I have way too much kit and recently it's been taking over the house.  Now the deal with my kit is that it's all supposed to be stored in the garage so clearly, something had to be done!

I picked random fabrics from my stash and ran up a lot of drawstring laundry bags.  They don't match in colour, the threads don't match and the drawstrings are not colour co-ordinated but I don't care.  They will never been seen by anyone but me (and anyone reading, but you can keep a secret, right?).

I didn't take individual photos but here they are being piled up ready for more boxes.  I acquired these boxes from the box fairy who found me on the way to the shop to buy boxes. I now have a garage with 6 or so 80 litre boxes full of kit...

Each character now has their own bag for kit so I can find each of them with ease.  The theory being I can see who I'm playing, go and collect the bag from the garage and then when the kit's been washed after the game I can just return it.

Sadly I have turfed up some more kit so I think I need more boxes...  Where do I leave offerings for the box fairy do you think?

Seeker Who?

I started my new character for the year on Sunday!  Little different for me this year as due to having volunteered (I'm mad, I know I am) to co-GM this years campaign I decided to a) start my new character early and b) start her at rank 10 (new characters can start anywhere between ranks 2 and 10).

She's a flouncy, flouncy freedom priest with no name and no knowledge of her past life hence only being known as Seeker (the title given to freedom priests in our system).

 The kit is mainly made from scraps.  The coat fabric is the left overs of the Merida dress (a coat wool being used for an actual coat!).  The lining was bought some years ago for something I didn't end up making and the silver trim is from the doublet project!  The buttons were new though.

 

 

The hat is my very first attempt at hat making and I'm quite pleased with it for a practice piece.  The pattern is one a friend of mine made and I used the last of the buckram my gran gave me covered with corduroy.  Important hat making tip - corduroy is not the best fabric for this! 

 The hat is trimmed with a ribbon from my stash that I think came off a box of chocolates and some peacock feathers I got in a charity shop haul ages ago.

 It's lined with the same lining as the coat and has a herringbone tape band to tidy it all up.

Last but not least, I ran up a very quick unlined bag to store my notebook, water bottle and sandwich!

So there we go.  Seeker looks to be a lot of fun and the kit was a nice easy make for the most part!

Stash Fabric Skirt

When I made my mum's birthday bag I had some fabric left over so I decided to run up a skirt for myself.

The pattern was made up as I went along and in order to make it more a-line (my preferred skirt shape) I added gores.  Only, I didn't have enough corduroy so I located this brown lace in my stash (funnily enough from a ball gown of mum's...) and used that instead.

 

There's not much more to say about this really, except that it was a really fun sew and I'm looking forward to wearing this (it will probably go into my volunteering in the charity shop wardrobe).

Oh!  And I'm really proud of the zip insertion - has to be my best yet!

Summer Frock

I hope you've been enjoying as much warm and sunny weather as we've had here in the South West of England this summer! 

The only complaint I've had is I don't own nearly enough summer clothes!  So I decided to fix this and I ran up a cotton summer dress.

The fabric is an embroidered cotton we picked up in The Cloth Shop, last time I was in London and it's lined with a mustardy yellow lining fabric (because that's what I had in my stash).

 As with the last time I made this dress I used Simplicity 2398, version C but modified to have version A/B straps permanently attached.

This version has a rolled hem, for no other reason than I wanted to practise playing with my rolled hem foot.  Next week I'll show you my new character kit and a skirt I ran up from stash fabric.  Have a lovely weekend!