Floe, the happy penguin.

On the cover of Inspirations 123 , Floe, the Fairy Penguin captured me immediately.  I loved the concept, the embroidery, and the felt medium. I also have a friend who loves penguins. I bought the kit. Once my major knitting projects were completed I decided to treat myself to making it. 

Carolyn Stanton, the designer, has an Etsy shop, with lots of felt projects. This one, however is only available through Inspirations.

Cutting out was fairly straightforward. The instructions for transferring the design seemed to me unnecessarily complicated, so I copied the pattern markings by hand, using lead pencil on the white and chalk pencil on the black. I had, of course, to either work fast or keep renewing the pencil marks on felt, but a combination of both worked well.

There is a variety of threads, including several different wools and silks. Getting the right one for each stitch kept me focused.  (Would it matter? Not sure.)

The trickiest part was getting the curves right while stitching it together.  

      

Without a beak and flippers it took on a slightly sinister look which I could only pray would disappear when finished.

The stuffing, however, had to come first.  I decided against the recommended filling of either rice or oven-hardened beans. I figured the chance of a doorstop getting wet was too high, so bought a bag of stones from Bunnings. These went neatly into the base in the kit-included cotton bag. Filling the upper body to make it firm took a significant amount of wool fibre stuffing, but worked the required magic on the shape as I stitched over the back join (not in the recommended colour!)

I am delighted with the result. 

As I had hoped, the beak and flippers turned it immediately into a recognisable penguin. 

Floe emerged in all her splendour, with plenty of personality and anxious to get to her real home.

She didn't  fit into any of the standard Australia Post boxes, but I had one that had already travelled the world and packed her in using bits of bubblewrap, shredding, tissue and paper bags. She travelled overnight and reached her new home this morning.

She is already at home and welcome. My friend refuses to put her on the floor and she has found her new niche at eye level.

I really enjoyed the challenge, both stitching and construction. It isn't a project I would recommend to an embroidery beginner, unless in a class or group with help, but with a bit of experience it is a really satisfying project.

I'm glad I went with the Floe.

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.