Birthday Bag

Last week I turned my mind to a bag to use as wrapping for Katherine's birthday present. I went through my stash of printed linens and eventually settled on a remnant of Ink and Spindle's  Wrens in Bluestone. This gave me the scope to add some embroidery, in this case, leaves to the number of the birthday

I had an unexpected free day last Friday, so made the most of it embroidering leaves, as well as visiting Create in Stitch. As I had hoped, they had a zip that fitted the pouch I had in mind. They had also advertised some leaf and flower-cup sequins that I wanted to investigate.

I came away with the zip and a life-time supply of sequins.

Blue fairy wrens are mostly ground feeders, but their habitat is amongst flowering gums, as well as grasses. While the sequins don't have stamens like flowering gums, they do have the shape and approximate colour in the light, so I added the number of sequins to fit the birthday.

The next day I emptied my drawer of cotton print fabric. I had lost track of what was in there and past rummaging hadn't improved accessibility.

I found fabric soft enough to work with the linen and,  which was pleasantly associated with Katherine's childhood.

I then created the pouch using the cotton as lining. I did all of it on my machine, except for the turn at the end of the zip, which I finished by hand.

I usually stitch the lining to the zip by hand, but was feeling confident (as, of course, I should, given the number I have made!).

I added the year and our initials in one corner. I used the DMC Etoile for this, but would probably have been better off using linen thread given the amount of shaping required. It is, however, quite readable.

The result was fit for purpose, and appreciated.