Start With Ugly

After hitting publish yesterday, I swivelled to look out the window and there was no view, just smoke. Even though I was really looking forward to visiting with my friend, it didn't make any sense to drive three hours closer to even more smoke so I stayed home and finished the bag. Staying indoors was a good idea. The air quality index was VERY HIGH and it smelled like a giant campfire all day.

Here's a reminder of how the bag fabric looked at the beginning - a 25" scarf of unknown fibre content that my friend bought as part of a purse kit while visiting Japan. It screamed - help me, I'm ugly! - so I did.




First, I layered the scarf with backing and batting and then outlined all of the flowers with satin stitch and outlining stitch. Next, I used two center fabrics and fabric markers to add further definition to the flowers before using thread work to form petal imagery. Above is the white flower and below is the red one. To bring more interest and vitality to the piece, I added turquoise, the direct compliment of the red, an orange-red.




This is the first textile-art type work I've done in a year. I enjoyed it and was thankful the skills came back easily. If you want more details on how the purse developed, you can read further back in the blog postings. I think the last five are about the purse.




The bottom worked out wonderfully. The curved shaping of the sides as well as the bound seam allowances make it sturdy and able to stand on its on. However, when I hold it up to the light, I can see through the stitches so I created a false bottom to provide extra support. Next time, I'll use a shorter stitch length and zigzag over the seams for re-enforcement.




For the false bottom, I cut a piece of mat board to size, trying it in the purse before covering it. I used the same fabric as the backing so it matches on the inside. The mat board was spray basted to the fabric which was trimmed slightly larger on the short ends and wide enough to overlap on the long edges. The fabric along both ends was folded toward the middle and glued in place and then the fabric along one long edge was folded and glued in place before the last edge was folded over and glued to finish. When I cut the fabric strip, I left the selvage along that final edge so it would make a neat, flat finish without hemming.

In this picture, the bag does NOT have the false bottom in and you can see how beautifully the shaping works. You can also see the tail of the rhinestone zipper, a fun touch.

And finally, the finished bag. It's 5" deep by 16" wide by 13" high not including the handle. The image above shows the white side and the image below the red side. Both are attractive although since the red is an orange-red and not my favourite shade, I prefer the white side.

In the original purse kit, the fabric was folded through the handles and brought around in front and tied with a bow. I wanted to maintain the Japanese-ish-ness of the kit and managed to do that with the turquoise print only I couldn't keep the bows. I tried a few different ones using organza and print fabrics and didn't like the look. I would have changed the handles as well if I wasn't using what I have and maintaining as much of the kit as possible. Something wider with two ends may have balanced the purse better. Otherwise, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. It's an excellent example of what you can do when you start with ugly and just have fun.

There are a whole bunch of blog comments that I want to respond to only this posting is already long enough so I'll do that next week. Have a wonderful weekend.

Talk Monday - Myrna

Grateful - at the same time as I am frustrated by it, I am grateful for our medical system. Things would be a lot more difficult without it.