Female Bishops Tote Bag

Last month (3 October 2025) Sarah Mullaly was named Archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to hold the office. The Anglican community has approximately 85 million members. About two thirds of the member churches recognise female priests. Australia has ordained 13 female bishops.

I still had 2 metres of the limited run Faces fabric produced by Tessuti Fabrics in Sydney.  This seemed the appropriate time to use some of that to mark the achievement of these women and all those who have worked so hard over decades to arrive at this point.

I cut out a bag and stitched it together, making it larger than usual to get 14 full faces, before mounting it in a hoop and digging out most of the purple cotton thread I had. I then used Quaker stitch to embroider the first name of each bishop, the year she was appointed, and the diocese in which that occurred.

To the 13 Australian names  I added that of the new Archbishop of Canterbury- a milestone for the Anglican communion.

Embroidering names is relatively slow work. The text can't be very large and it is hard to keep some letters clear, particularly e, the most frequently used in English! 

When I finished the names, it looked unremarkable. I discussed ideas with family and some of the World Embroidery Study Group, which I convene for the Embroiderers' Guild. They agreed I should add mitres and croziers. 

I had found some purple batik in my stash that I was tempted to use as lining. The World Embroidery Study Group made me promise to use plain purple. Spotlight had a choice of several and I settled for a dark purple quilting cotton. I also bought wadding. I was concerned that the Face fabric would not stand up to the wear and tear a bag gets. I should, in fact, have added wadding or interfacing before embroidering. 

I added the wadding to the lining before constructing the inner bag. This made for tricky corners and a bit of ironing. I had thought I might quilt around the faces, but, after one section, gave it up. Instead I decided to hand stitch the mitres and croziers into the wadding.

The design did not allow me to add mitres directly to each head, so I created a row running horizontally across the top, using a variety of gold threads. I fitted 4 mitres on one side of the bag, two on the other side. The shapes are far from precise, being fitted in between black lines, using thread that is stiff and prone to shredding.

I began the croziers using gimp, but quickly decided these were too thin, so worked herringbone stitch over them in a variety of metallic threads. I kept adding them in spaces between the faces until each side looked balanced and a bit eye catching.

In case there was any remaining ambiguity, I added a caption on one side.

As with many of my projects, I think it's a bit crazy. Who knows who, if anyone, will want this bag. Perhaps one of the bishops might use it to carry their vestments: it's just about big enough! Or one of the women who fought for years for the ordination of women might find a use. 

While this is definitely a one-off embroidery, I have once again experimented with using photographs of the embroidery to create printed bags. I photographed both sides several times until I had a clear photo and uploaded photos of both the front and back to the VistaPrint website. It took me longer to add a small print caption to each side, one acknowledging Tessuti, the creator of the Faces fabric, and the other claiming ownership. 

This is what it looks like in pre-print template. I have ordered 3 to be printed as a test. If it works, this will be a sturdy, normal size, useful, affordable tote that a few people might want. I'll see when they arrive in a few weeks time.

It's been another experiment, learning as I go, winging it. I've come to think the original faces might be too dominant. Maybe the names alone would have been enough. The advantage is the image of women, en masse, facing the same way, in your face.

A male friend from my Sydney University Evangelical Union days in the late 1960s recently reminded me of a meeting of EU women I convened, at the request of women members, in, I think, 1967, to discuss  the ordination of women. Our guest was Deaconess Mary Andrews, the head of the Church of England's Deaconess House. Her message was basically: don't waste your time, it will never happen. It wasn't, we felt, a position of belief, but of pragmatism, and pretty depressing.

Fortunately, some of those present ignored the advice. For my part, the battle was channelled into education rather than the church. More than half a century on, we have made some progress, in both education and the church. A very ordinary tote bag is my way of marking it.

Wattle Tote

I’m making an effort, in between knitting projects, to diminish the pile of Ink and Spindle linen bags I have cut out. I began with this heavyweight Golden Wattle on Indigo 

My idea with all these bags is to embroider a couple of highlights but let the hand-printed linen speak for itself.

In this case I planned to cover some of the wattle bloom with Ghiordes knots. For those unfamiliar,  Ghiordes knots are made by creating and anchoring a series of loops close together then cutting the loops. 

The fun part is fluffing up the cut threads.

Creating the loops is exacting, and, to me, a bit tiresome on scale. I was pleased to get to the end of the small bunch I’d chosen.

The threads need to be brushed up with a small stiff brush. When I first worked these, some 15 years ago, I bought a boo-boo stick - a brush designed for removing mistakes in cross-stitch. It’s a while since I used it, and I couldn’t find it. It’s in that safe place.  They are hard to come by in Australia. I’ve ordered another one from Tasmania, a guarantee the original one will turn up!

In the meantime. I found an adequate substitute in the brush end of a dressmaker"s pencil.

Ink and Spindle linen comes in three weights, and I use all three for these bags. This one is heavyweight, which does give a lovely firm surface to work with.

I have a big pile of these bags waiting to be made, all cut out ready to construct once the embroidery is done. I cut according to the shape of the piece, which in this case was separate front, back and sides for the outside, but the lining was cut with the front and sides on one piece and the back and bottom on the other. It took me a while to figure it out! The strip left for handles was a bit thin, so I substituted some denim.

Once I figured all that out, it took under an hour to stitch the bag together on the machine.

I tested the result out on a couple of family members. As I feared they thought there should be a little more embroidery, suggesting  the lower right-hand corner.

I was inclined to agree.  While not ideal, it was possible to embroider through the layers of bag and lining, so I did. It won't hurt to hold the two layers of linen together there near the base.

It's a definite improvement. I'm now pretty satisfied with this one. 

I have no specific purpose in mind. No one I know needs another Ink and Spindle tote - but I'll add it to my stock, which will find a good home one day.

SashikoTote Embroidery

This kit was a present for my birthday in January, and I am trying to stay on top of kits as I get them, rather than adding to my much-too-large stash, so once I finished the fourth Evil Eye Mandala, I got to work on this one.

The kit consists on a single piece of Shima fabric, a piece of interfacing exactly the same size, lining fabric a little larger to allow for a pocket, thread and a woven strap. Instructions are brief, mostly amounting to suggestions. Suits me.

My first problem was finding my sashiko needles. I had one I was using on my tablecloth project, and  I knew I had a packet somewhere..... Eventually I gave in and bought some more. Create in Stitch was waiting on a shipment but Riverlea Quilts had a supply. A couple of days later I realised I had a good set of sizes in the harp I had made with Jenny Aiden Christie back in 2019! They would probably benefit from use!

In the meantime, I had begun rows of running stitch straight along one edge - an easy feat to accomplish while talking or being Desk Hostess at the Guild.

Circles were a bit more challenging. I dug out a circle-maker (far left) that you anchor in the centre with a pin, then insert a chalk pencil into the relevant hole and rotate, but the chalk kept breaking. The colour wheel proved more useful.  I used it to make three concentric circles using the outer edge and the top and bottom of the cut-out sections, then drew circles in between freehand.

I varied them, single row, 

double,

triple, and overlapping.

I have now added some more straight lines and finished the embroidery. Construction should be relatively straightforward, but I mislaid the magnet closure and am awaiting a replacement. I'm also thinking of adding an adjustment buckle in the woven strap.

  

      Rather than wait for these I will post this and add the construction story later.

Another bag trio

This week I returned to embroidering a couple of flowers on Ink and Spindle Black Cockatoo linen that I had set aside while working on a couple of major gift projects. The linen was already cut for a bag, and I had begun embroidering a couple of the flowers using bullion knots in perle 5 cotton to add a touch of dimension. I finished the two bullion knot flowers and added one in straight stitch. The back of the bag uses the same fabric but is left without embroidery.

I had another two panels in the flannel flower print, already embroidered and awaiting construction into a tote, as well as another length of fabric set aside with a Nicola Jarvis bird I had embroidered several years ago, so I spent a few hours ironing and cutting out lining, sides and bases to make up the three bags.  

The two sets for embroidered totes made up fairly easily over a couple of days once I put my mind and machine to it.

The grevillea print was trickier. I try to work with the shape and orientation of the fabric and this piece suggested a horizontal orientation, so I worked on a folio-style bag with a zip along the opening. 

As usual, I was working it out as I went along, and intending to attach a shoulder strap across the top, but realised, after I had stitched the zip to the outer layer, that it would need handles in the centre as well, so they had to be added. This also meant it would be better if the shoulder strap could be kept inside the bag until needed, but that could only work with the bag unzipped.  

The shoulder strap was, at this point, in two pieces, waiting to be joined. 

It occurred to me that if the shoulder strap clipped together in the centre, the two pieces could be tucked down their respective sides of the bag, so I made a trip to Spotlight for a clip to join the two ends, rather than stitch them together as I originally intended. 

At the tab end of the zip, the strap can be tucked in the open bag. 

At the other end I made a gusset, so the strap is tucked between the lining and the outer layer. It’s a somewhat strange solution I admit.

In addition, the bag is not entirely symmetrical - an unintended consequence of my work-it-out-as-I-go approach. It is 41cm wide and 30cm high in the centre, but with a 2cm discrepancy at the side edges.

It is, however, sturdy and will hold a fair bit - certainly a towel and beach equipment, artist equipment, or even overnight travel needs. It was fun to experiment. As I learned while doing Barbara Mullan’s Design Online Course, I fall into the design-as-you-go rather than design-it-in-advance group and that's OK.

These three add to my growing pile of tote gift bags - and I have fabric for more. I now have the zipped bag, seven embroidered linen tote bags and three printed tote bags awaiting homes. I have linen for at least another six, probably more. Better, I think, give tote bags a rest for a while.

Flannel Flower tote

My apologies for a font variation in this post which I have been unable to resolve. 

Ink and Spindle recently released a new linen, printed this time with flannel flowers. 

Actinotus helianthi, for readers outside Australia, are native to our East Coast, particularly around the Sydney area. The flowers are usually 5-8 cm across and have a furry texture - a bit like flannel. The centres appear greenish from a distance and the leaves grey. On close inspection they have blue, yellow, grey and beige elements. They were very much part of my childhood and I have always loved them.

Ink and Spindle have produced this linen in several colour ways and I bought two of them with a view to making tote bags. 

I wanted to add a little embroidery, but not much, to keep the beauty of the linen print to the fore. I thought I would just embroider one flower centre on each side and checked lots of photos of flannel flowers online first to decide what threads to use. 

To my surprise, I discovered there is a pink flannel flower, Actinotus forsythii, which I have never seen. It is less common, but germinates in strength after fire, and has been prolific in the Blue Mountains since the 2020 fires.

I decided to use this as my colour way for the Spice linen piece and the conventional greeny colours for the other piece. 

French knots were a no-brainer, so I used various shades of pink perle 5 cotton to embroider one centre. I began in a very literal manner, using the printed pattern and working from a dark centre to lighter in the background.  While I was pleased with the result, a closer look at photographs suggested the colours weren't as ordered as that, so I varied the arrangement when I tackled the other side.

This got closer to the photographs but it still misses the hazy effect. The dark centres are also still too regulated. Variegated thread might work if I found the right range. This doesn't need to be realistic but it's satisfying to keep experimenting.

I did most of this stitching at night, and found the directional light I recently bought at Aptos Cruz was very helpful in this detailed colour work.

I stuck with my notion of only embroidering one centre on each side of the bag. I found some plain linen to both line and create handles, sides and base.  Construction was straightforward, particularly as I was able to use a single strip for the sides and base.  

I'm delighted with this result. I think the colours work well and the single centre embroidery feels right to me.

This bag is also squarer than I usually make - cut a little shorter in length to accommodate the fabric cut. I really like the shape. It is still practical and certainly fits this design. I have enough linen to make two bags this size in each colour. It might even become my default.

I'm now turning my attention to the other colour way, what Ink and Spindle call 'Flannel flower in Fennel and Saltbush'.