Razzmatazz bag

Two days ago I went into a charity shop and nearly jumped up and down at one particular skirt that I discovered there -

Can you see why?

It's utterly vibrant with all the gorgeousness of, well, something really gorgeous!!   And I fell in love with it.

While I was there I spotted another skirt that I thought might come in handy - it's a lime green linen skirt. 

It just so happened to go really well with the pink skirt!  What are the chances, eh?!

So what have I been doing since Saturday?

Creating another bag of course!!

Did I follow a pattern?  Nope!  With so little fabric available it was nigh on impossible to follow a pattern so I decided to wing it.  The amount of fabric in half of the pink skirt would have to dictate the dimensions and style of the bag.  I have journal plans for the other half...

So I got my graph paper out.

And drew and measured and measured and drew.

After much designing and sewing, this is what I conjured up:

As you can see the lime and cerise were made to go together.

The bag itself is softly padded.

With comfy padded, two-tone straps.  I had much fun figuring out how to make double-sided handles - and now I know!!



I love playing with colours so I used the pink as the interior top band and used the lining from the lime skirt to line the bag.



I also added an internal pocket and magnetic snaps to finish it off.



Have I kept my design details?  You betcha!  I might make a pattern for this - what do you reckon?

Ok, back to my orders!

Celtic dress bag

So I find some fabric.  But it's not just any old fabric.  It's a dress with the most wonderful celtic pattern on it. 

I had no clue what to do with it at the time but I knew that it would come in handy at some point - how could I leave something as pretty as this in the charity shop?

The bottom of the dress was almost Aline which meant that there was more useable fabric available.

But what to do with it...

When my friend asked for a bag for her big birthday I just *knew* that she would love something made from the dress.  The celtic pattern is so her.

So I cut off the bottom of the dress below the band and turned it upside down making a perfect bag shape!

Then I interfaced the ties and used them as straps.  Thankfully they were quite long anyway.

As I was playing with the sleeves that I had cut off the dress I had an idea.  What if I squished them, added homemade bias binding and turned it into a pocket?

Well, that seemed to work!!

 The base was made from more dress and the bag was padded throughout to give it extra body.

With the addition of a label it was all ready to go... but would my friend like it??

Well, I gave it to her today and she seemed really quite happy with it.

That makes two of us!