Wednesday 3 June 2009

PennyDog's Garden Swap

Swap goodies from SpoiltPig
PennyDog's Garden Swap has been such a great experience - I feel lucky that I got paired with Chrissy - it's been great to get to know her better (she goes dolphin watching! she lives in Aberdeen! she is considerably cooler than me!) and she has been so generous. Her parcel of goodies arrived here yesterday and as you can see I got some fabulous things - a lovely hand-printed tote bag (that I have decided to use for current crochet projects), a fabulous hand made ring and fridge magnets, a very stylish b&w rose picture, a japanese lantern, some chocolate (that didn't last long) and some incredible fabric. I also got a 10% off voucher for her brilliant shop. See, I told you I did well! There's been some other great swap parcels - you can take a look at the Garden Swap Flickr group. A huge THANK YOU to Chrissy for all the lovely thoughtful goodies you sent - can't wait to make something fabulous with that fabric!


Handmade bag with handsewn wool felt applique
While we're on the subject of the swap I thought I'd blog the bag I made to go in to Chrissy's parcel. It's a small bag (about 20cm x 20cm) made with navy cotton twill with a handsewn, wool felt, flower garden applique. I have to say that I am pretty much more proud of this than anything I have ever made, and it was VERY hard to send it off to Aberdeen. Doing the applique was a real challenge (I always like to set myself a bit of a challenge when I'm doing swaps!) but I think it worked well and I got the slightly retro feel I was going for. I'm also very pleased with the colour combination, because I'm never confident about how colours go together. The handles are recycled from an charity shop bag find, and I used that bag as a template for this one. That's my bag making top tip actually... You can find some ace bags in charity shops - I like to use them to make a pattern and reuse all the bits and bobs (handles, zips, buttons, beads, etc), that come with them. I am really hoping Mary Portas' ideas to revamp charity shops don't catch on - I'm worried I wont be able to find bargains any more...

4 comments:

Caroline said...

Oh, that's so pretty, Ali - no wonder you couldn't bear to part with it. Get some like that in the shop, quick!

Did you machine-app or handsew it? I'm always a bit nervous of applique cos I'm never convinced hand-sewn will stay on, but you can't always get prefab stuff (like kids' clothes - I'm so putting off doing K's jeans) on a machine, the angle's too awkward. I really want to do some more though. I might have to pick your brains on Sunday :)

Chrissy said...

*squeal* You're so much more organised than me! I'm so happy you enjoyed the swap as much as I did and I'll get a post up about it as soon as I can!

I absolutely adore the bag, you can feel better knowing how much it's loved haha. I feel very privileged to have been made such an awesome gift and you must have worked so hard on it so I can imagine I'm also very lucky it got posted!

Izabela said...

oh I totally love the bag!

jillytacy said...

I love this bag! The color combos are great!