All Strung Up

Hiya from a.,

It was Thanksgiving this week, which we enjoy but are still fundamentally confused by.  Apparently by going to the house of a friend, we were at an "orphan" Thanksgiving.  A good time was had by all, and we did some minor shopping the next day.  This has nothing to do with what I am planning to show you today, just thought I would share.

The first thing up is more of what I did, rather than what I made.  As you know, faithful readers (hi to the moms and woolwine!) I have been on a hat kick recently.  The problem is that they can get tossed around and go missing easily.  I am a resourceful person however, and what you can do with a couple nails, smooth wire, and a level is quite nice:

I at first just had the top tier, but then realized how easy it is to lose one glove, so decided to string them up as well.  Now everything is easily accessed, and nicely presented as well.

The other thing that I have to show you is a tote bag that I made for a friend.  I regularly make tote bags for myself, my mom has commissioned a half dozen from me at this point, but they tend to be simple and straightforward.  For this bag, I wanted to do more.  I wanted something interesting, but not over the top, and I did my second patchwork/applique kind of thing.  Here is the broad shot:

It is a simple brown pinstripe base fabric, but I added petal/flower work in the corner to add colour and pop.  here is a close up of the main patch area:

I cut out three different sized petals, and then used fusible webbing stuff to hold it together in the pattern, so that it would be more stable for sewing onto the bag.  Of course because I tend to be a little over ambitious, the bag is capable of being fully reversible so that instead you could have it looking like this:

As you see the fabric that created the petal corner on the one side, became a patchwork pocket on the other side.  This bag was a lot of work, from planning, to cutting, to putting it together, but it was worth it.
That's all I have this week, enjoy.