Day: 18 January 2008

bags, craft, sewing

Freya’s Fabulous Fortieth Frenchy Bag

My cousin Freya turned forty today.  I made her a Frenchy bag (to replace the bag I made her from vintage barkcloth fabric that fell apart in the wash).  It’s the same Amy Butler pattern that I used for Donna’s Christmas bag.

The exterior fabrics are by Kaffe Fassett, and the interior pocket fabrics are from Moda’s Full Moon Forest line.  I made the matching make-up purse from Nicole Mallalieu’s pattern.  I fused a layer of thin wadding to the outside fabric of the purse – it really helps give it a more professional finish.  I think I’m addicted to wadding for bag making.

The bag has the usual “thornberry” features – fully interfaced, both the exterior and lining (the fabric is fairly light-weight), with the exterior also fused with thin wadding.  There is the usual key fob inside:

and a magnetic snap.  As with Donna’s bag, I divided the interior pockets into two.  I hand-stitched the lining to the outer along the seamline between the top and the body of the bag, rather than attempting to machine topstitch on the previous topstitching line as per the instructions – too difficult to get a nice finish, in my opinion!  The hand stitching didn’t take long, and looks much better.

It is so difficult to photograph the inside of bags!  I also did a little machine quilting around the red/pink flowers on one side of the bag – although you’ll have to look very closely to make it out!  This fabric lends itself very well to feature quilting and/or beading – not that I had time to do either, but further embellishment would look really lovely.

And yes, she likes it!  Happy Fortieth my Favourite Fizz!

children's clothing, craft, crochet, kids clothing

Self-striped crochet top for Clare – blue/green version

Here’s another of the self-striped tops!

I did a better job of this one than the previous version – I’d managed to figure out the trickier bits of the pattern the first time around.  It probably took me less time to make.  I’m excited because it doesn’t contain any pink and she was still very happy to wear it.  Yarn and pattern details are the same as before. 

A couple of close-ups for those of you who really want to check out the “quality” of the stitches – the front:

And the back:

Enough of those tops now!  Time to move on to one of the other crochet projects.  I’m tossing up between starting yet another scarf (but a different pattern in a different yarn), doing the 12″ block from the CAL (crochet a-long) that I’ve joined on ravelry , or starting a top for myself.  I like to have a few things of differing complexity and time commitment on the go, so that I can work on whatever suits my mood.

And for added interest – Miss Stella has started to crawl!  Properly!  Straight for the power points and any cords that are attached to them.  I think my crafting time is about to reduce dramatically.