A tote bag experiment…

Miss Mouse tote bag
Miss Mouse tote bag

I sneaked a little something new onto the website last week – Miss Mouse & friends tote bags

They’re made from 80% recycled cotton with 20% recycled polyester. They measure 37 x 43cm (so they’ll easily fit an A4 pad sideways), and they have a small gusset at the bottom so they’re not completely flat. The handles are 65cm long, so the bag will tuck neatly under your arm. 

fox & badger tote bag
fox & badger tote bag

There are four designs, each on a different colour of bag, and they’re £15 each.
(If you’re a Patron at www.missmou.se or a subscriber to the mailing list, you should have a discount code.)

Mr Magpie tote bag
Mr Magpie tote bag

The tote bags are produced by a company called Stanley/Stella, who are based as far as possible on sound ethical principles. (I have a grumble about the fact that they don’t offer any plus sizes in their t-shirts, but that’s another story.) 

They’re printed by Inkthreadable, who are a print-on-demand drop-shipping company. This means that you buy a tote bag, I confirm the order with Inkthreadable, and then they print it and send it straight out to you. It takes a few days – there’s no next-day delivery because it takes a while to do the printing. But if you order a bag, it should be with you inside a week. 

chocolate coins tote bag
Woodland Gang chocolate coins tote bag

I think this one’s my favourite – it makes me laugh to think about carrying a shopping bag with the Woodland Gang saving up their chocolate coins. Well, except for Pip – as usual!

Only Eight Who Do.

Tote bag with recycled slogan patch
Tote bag with recycled slogan patch

Look, I finally got around to something I’ve been meaning to do for ages!

This central panel used to be a tote bag that I bought from The Body Shop way back in 1992, or thereabouts, at the height of supermodel mania. The glossy magazines were filled with Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Elle McPherson, Christy Turlington, and presumably four other supermodels who I can’t remember right now. (1992 was a long time ago!)

The tote bag had been on its last legs for a very long time – the straps were frayed and fragile, and the fabric was stained in the corners from 20+ years of spilled drinks and lunches. I didn’t want to throw it out because I love the sentiment:

“there are three billion women who don’t look like supermodels, and only eight who do”.

The Body Shop

Recently my husband brought home a new tote bag from an IT conference, so I decided to chop up my beloved old one, and use it to cover up the huge logo on the new bag. All I did was cut out the central panel, and use one of the fancy embroidery stitches on my sewing machine to attach it to the new bag. I didn’t bother with hemming the edges – I knew that the fabric would fray, and I quite like the visual reminder that it’s actually a bit old and worn out – just like me!  Even without a sewing machine, this would be a super easy fix. You could stitch a patch onto a new bag by hand, you could use fabric glue, or you could use an iron-on interfacing to stick it into place.  We have another one of these bags, and my husband has at least one beloved t-shirt that’s becoming too worn out to wear, so that would be an ideal candidate for a similar makeover. Cut out the print, stick or stitch it over the logo, done! 

Fitting in some sewing

Cherry sash belt

It’s not going to be all Me-Made May all the time around here – I’ll post a round-up every few days. In the meantime, I’ve been doing a bit of sewing from my extensive stash of increasingly small pieces of fabric.

Four sash belts

These are a series of sash belts, very simple ones that you can just tie around your waist. They’re all one-offs, and you can find them in the Etsy shop.

I have more belts planned for the future, as soon as my order of d-rings and rivets arrive. With the help of some organic cotton and some hand-made felt, hopefully something interesting will emerge.

Four Headscarves

These are headscarves, designed principally for the 1950s Night that’s coming up at work in a couple of weeks. Again, in the Etsy shop. I need to go back to the fabric shop for a small piece to make one of these to match my own dress. I’m not totally convinced that this kind of headscarf will suit me, but if it doesn’t look right in my hair I can always tie it rakishly around my neck.

Zipped Pouches

And finally… a huge pile of zipped pouches! These have been sitting on my shelves staring at me since Christmas, so I can finally stop feeling guilty about not having sewn them yet! These are all multiples – eight of the Eiffel Tower print, three dancing skeletons (so cute!), eight skulls & roses with a plain red lining, and two with black & red stripes inside. All, you’ve guessed it, in the Etsy shop.

In fact, while I’m throwing Etsy links at you, you might like a little something in return! If you’ve never shopped on Etsy before, you can get £5 off your first purchase by following this link. You don’t have to spend it straight away, you can claim it as credit to use whenever you like. It doesn’t need to be in my shop either, the link should work throughout Etsy. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I should probably mention that if two people use the link to make a purchase, I get a £10 credit to spend myself.)

Also in the spirit of full disclosure, I should probably say that I don’t know how many more of these zipped pouches I’ll be sewing. There’s no doubt that they’ve been popular, but I don’t really like the production line method of working that’s necessary to sew them up quickly, and now that my stash is depleting… well. I’ll have to think about it. I want to concentrate much more on organic fabrics and haberdashery, but organic cotton zips are much more expensive than nylon ones, which pushes up the price of a little pouch by a significant amount. We’ll have to see.

These are the last that I have planned for a while though, so if you want one I’d go for it sooner rather than later!

First look at the zipped pouches

Zipped pouches - finished!

These are the first few zipped pouches hot off the machine. I’m snatching little bits of time here and there to make them, in the hope of finishing as many as possible before the stall on Saturday. I have a terrible habit of thinking I “haven’t got time” to do something, and pootling about on Facebook or Pinterest instead. These pouches come together so quickly now that all the cutting out has been done, that I have high hopes of having a nice little basketful by the weekend, all made in my spare moments after work.

Zipped pouches - finished!

This gives you an idea of the size. They measure about 7½ by 5 inches  – plenty of room for a smallish camera or biggish smartphone. Each pouch is fully lined, and hand-finished so that there’s no visible stitching anywhere.

And below, you can see my one concession to the festive season – five little starry pouches, made from the leftovers of the Christmas dress I made for my niece last year!

Zipped pouches - finished!

I’ll be selling these at the fair for £4 each, or three for £10. Any that I bring back will be going on Etsy at a flat £4, as I can’t do the combined offer there. If anyone wants to grab any of these before they go, just send me a message with your chosen fabrics (which you can see in the previous post), and I’ll send them out first thing next week. Postage will depend on how many you buy!

Speaking of Etsy, I’ll be closing the shop next Saturday, just for one day, to make sure that I don’t accidentally sell two of something I’ve only made one of. So, if you’ve had your eye on something and don’t want to risk it selling out at the weekend, it might be wise to head on over to the Emporium and grab it now!

A stash-busting exercise gone awry

Zipped pouches - in progress

It started off as an exercise in using up my stash of 7″ skirt zips. These are the ingredients for 20 lined pouches, cut from remnants left from clothes I’ve made over the years.

While I was cutting up my pile of larger scraps, I thought I might as well carry on. So I kept on snipping until I’d been though every piece of quilting cotton I could find.

Zipped pouches - in progress

This then, is another forty-four sets of fabric and lining. Which means that whilst I have indeed used up my entire stash of 7″ skirt zips… I now need to go and buy quite a lot more. Oops…

I don’t know how many of these I’ll manage to complete in time for the Berkshire Autistic Society Christmas Fair next Saturday, as my only day off work next week is earmarked for Christmas shopping. But I’ve got a couple of afternoons and a week’s worth of evenings, so hopefully there should be quite a few for sale!

Pads, pouches, pillows and pockets

zipped pouch for Sarah

This is a zipped pouch that I made for Sarah’s birthday. It’s about 12″ long, but sadly not quite big enough to fit a 12″ ruler inside, otherwise it would have made a lovely pencil case! Although it is long enough for pencils…

I wanted to pop something inside the pouch, and it was just the right size for a wheat pad, a hop pocket and a little clove and lavender pillow. The hops came from the skycarrots allotment, but I didn’t think Sarah would mind getting a few back again!

Wheat, hops, lavender & cloves

Sarah and I are doing a fun art project together, where we take it in turns to create an image which we then share on a tumblr called scribblescribes. Each of our entries is “inspired by the day” and contains lettering. So far I think Sarah’s “scribbles” are much more imaginative than mine, so I want to try and think about my days a bit more creatively!

Today I am mostly staring at a blank Risk Assessment form that I need to fill in to apply for a market stall at an event in May. These things just feel so terribly soul-sucking. What risk can there possibly be from a stall full of haberdashery that can’t be avoided by the application of simple common sense? Okay, so we are hoping to take candles, but there’s a strong possibility that we won’t be allowed to light them anyway, so hopefully our chances of setting fire to all our customers and burning down the venue will be minimal!

(Note to self: must buy small fire blanket.)

Wordless Wednesday: Only Eight Who Do.

Supermodels

Flamingo Weekend Bag

Flamingo Weekend Bag

This is what I looked like when I arrived home from a long weekend with two of my oldest friends. We had a fabulous time, but I had to leave early because I was completely and utterly exhausted. And then I had to wrestle this bag across London on a bus and a train, which just about finished me off.

I started to pack my little wheeled suitcase. Then I decided that was overkill for a long weekend, and took everything out. I tried to re-pack everything into my Baba Studio Alice in Wonderland bag, but that was too small. So I decided to make a new weekend bag. Three hours before I was due to leave. As you do.

I knew I’d have to leave my bag in the cloakroom at the V&A, so I went to their website to see what size of bag they’d accept. I took those measurements, subtracted an inch all round to be on the safe side, pulled out the heaviest fabric in my stash, and set to work. It’s an extremely basic rectangular box bag, with a zip set into the top. It has two long handles, so it can be carried on the shoulder. It took hardly any time to make, and I was really pleased with it.

Until I took it upstairs and realised that it was actually larger than my little suitcase. And less convenient because it didn’t have wheels. Oops.

I dragged the damn thing into London anyway, but unfortunately it met with a slight disaster on the way home. Heading upstairs on the bus, I caught one of the handles on the end of the hand rail. The stitching turned out to be stronger than the fabric, and now there’s a hole. Oops.

Obviously I could fix the hole, and I should have reinforced the area behind the handles in the first place… but the bag was so big and so heavy that I can’t bear to think about using it again for a while! Maybe when I do mend it, I’ll make it a little bit smaller at the same time.

Library Book Bag

Library Book Bag

I’ve been making this book bag for several months now, on and off. It was a request from my parents, to make them a nice sturdy bag that they could use to carry a little pile of hardbacks home from the library.

This is actually bag number two, as I somehow managed to get myself a bit confused with the measurements of the first one. For reasons I’m not quite clear on, it came out wide instead of tall. (No, I didn’t sew the pieces together the wrong way round. Honest.)

Thankfully I had enough fabric left over to make this second bag… and there’s still a piece big enough to make bag number three, just in case I’ve accidentally done something daft with this one as well!

Smocking, Traditional and Modern.

Smocking, traditional and modern

This is a sneaky peek at what you’ll be making if you come along to my Smocking Workshop at the Museum of English Rural Life. (It’s on September 19 & 20, and there are still places left! Book here…)

As you can see, we’ll be working the smocking stitches on gingham. For beginners it’s the easiest way to keep everything neat and lined up.

The top panel shows a variety of traditional smocking stitches – like the ones found on the smocks in the Museum’s collection.

The lower panel is made up of more modern smocking stitches that you tend to find on clothing from the 1930s onwards.

I find it interesting that the traditional stitches keep the gathering in very neat little columns all the way down, whereas the modern stitches are almost all designed to form a diamond pattern. The modern stitches are much more stretchy, but they take quite a bit longer to work.

In reality, although smocking looks very elaborate, you only need to know how to do one embroidery stitch, and you can turn it into all of these. If you can get the hang of back stitch, you can be smocking away in no time!