So, you've been sewing

June 23, 2015

So, you've been sewing

I'm feeling a little bit blown away today. In the best and most wonderful way though and all because you lovely people out there are so very wonderful and kind.

You've warmed my little squidgy places inside, made me grin and blush and generally spoilt me with your comments and kind purchases of my latest pattern, Feeling Dotty, that I posted about last time.

Thank you very much indeed.
I'm so very grateful and never fail to be quite surprised and very delighted by you all.

: :

Today's offering is a little sewing that I've had on my mind to do for a while. I made a little red project pouch back in.... wow, before January it seems. (Here's some pictures I showed after featuring it on my podcast.) Which I was most happy with in style and appearance but most unsatisfied with in terms of the construction process. I mean, it turned out just fine and dandy and all but it took me a lot of time and an awful lot of faffing to get right and I thought to myself 'there must be an easier way'.

Well, it turns out there was. The lovely Jo N (who doesn't have a blog I don't think - do you?) recommended a tutorial to me that she'd found on Pinterest for a very similar looking kind of thing. I checked it out and saw that it would be perfect. (You can find the Pin here.) So much easier than the version I had dreamt up and best of all, it had the lovely wide opening top that I loved about my original.

The main feature of this bag was the pretty 'kids playing on the beach' fabric that I've had for a while and used on my Mum's Christmas present. I'd left it out at the time, meaning to come back to it later and as the theme of it naturally lent itself to blues, that's what I went with.

As usual, the selecting of the right fabrics, the choosing of trims and decisions on which little details to add where by far the most fun but also the most time consuming and agonising aspect of the thing. It's strange that I love faffing with different style and colours, trying them next to each other and experimenting with combinations so much and yet it can also be such a difficult and sometimes frustrating affair.

Maybe that's why, the joy of the occasions when it works out. When things click and you know you love it are perhaps reward enough to balance out the times when things clash, nothing looks right and you wonder if you are remotely capable of making anything pretty at all.

This project, like the little red one, was more pleasure than pain though and following a tutorial, rather than having the brain ache of trying to suss out the pattern myself helped enormously.