Tuesday 8 April 2008

A-hunting we will go

K and I are going shopping later - bimbling around the charity shops, that is, looking for the perfect bag lining. I had a bit of a brain-blarg last night and now I have THREE bags cut out and in various stages of readiness! I did spend some time with the sewing machine yesterday and my tweedy coat-to-bag is almost finished, but I am really struggling with the tension for this one and the thread keeps bird's nesting like mad. Sometimes it's fine and then for no apparent reason it goes nuts. So I'm running very low on brown thread to finish it off - it needs the lining sewing in on three sides and a strap making, but that's otherwise done.

Last night I cut out an Amy Butler pattern from a sweater I bought last summer and felted down - it's a lovely graduated grey stripe and feels so cosy and soft. Unfortunately I don't have a good lining fabric for it so that's what we're going looking for. I have something in pale blue in mind, maybe with little white flowers or lacy pattern, but that's the joy of second-handing - you have no clue what you'll run across and fall in love with.

My second coat-to-bag conversion has also been planned and cut out - for this I have everything I need, of course, as the lining is the coat lining and I'll be using the old fur collar as a trim (that said, I still haven't quite got my head around how/when to attach the handles). But I want to bead/embroider the front of it; since it's grey fuzz with grey fur I'm going for silver beads and thread.

My third bag wasn't cut out at all, actually, because it's a scarf-to-bag conversion for which I'll be putting up a tutorial once I get my head around Inkscape - this uses a 59ins fringed scarf to make a 10ins pocket bag, all by folding it back on itself to make the lining out of the same piece. If it all sews together properly, that is! I do have some embroidery to do on that; it has some multicoloured shishas on already but I want to add more and then the fringe will be beaded (and belled!).

I also have another two in my head planned out which I didn't get as far as doing last night - a small pouch bag from the black/brown patterned velvet skirt I bought on our last trip, and some kind of messenger bag from the fairly hideous turquoise/lilac check upholstry stuff I got from Unique Scrapstore last time. It looks like train seat fabric - and probably is - but I plan to cover it with crochet flowers (once I've learnt to do them). That needs a nice lining to be found, though, maybe we'll pick something up today.

So, that "not doing much" thing...it seems to have passed! And all of these things are recons, too - none of the fabric is new other than the interfacing, and some of the fixings I've bought specially. Even the beads and embellishments are all things I've got in, often left over from other projects. I think overall these 5-6 bags will cost me less than £30 to put together...not bad!

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