Garnet Bag

After my recent smocking binge I treated myself to a couple of short embroidery projects. The first was a redworked linen bag from Inspirations Magazine 71.

The design is based on a pin pillow design by Margaret Light. I attended Margaret's workshop for the pin pillow at Beating Around the Bush 2009 and really enjoyed the project.

 The Garnet Bag is designed by Anna Scott and uses every imaginable variety of chain stitch, some of which I had never tried. I very much enjoyed using them.

The thread is a lovely rich, deep red perle - great to work with and a good variation of stitches.

The main stem is in heavy chainstitch - one chain overlapping on top of another - very effective. The big leaves are outlined in double chain stitch - worked like a closed feather stitch.

The veins of the big leaves are wheatear stitch and fly stitch.



The centre is filled with Ghiordes knots - really effective and requiring care to sustain over what is a fairly large area.






Again, this is a project designed to sustain the stitcher's interest - enough of each stitch to get a bit of practice and see how the stitch works, but not so much that you get bored with repetition. It was fun to see how many variations there might be on simple chain stitch.
I'd have liked clearer labelling of the bits of the design. It wasn't always easy to work out which 'upper' or 'lower' flower was referred to or which was the 'sepal'.

Making up the bag was a little tricky. I found attaching the handles  awkward as the tabs holding the handles were very close to the top of the bag and there wasn't a lot of room to manoeuvre, even using a zipper foot. I need to practice.

I also added some elastic in the top edge of the sides as I thought it gaped a little when empty.

The result is a little crooked at the top, but not enough to stop the bag being used. It looks like a handmade bag - but quite a nice one.