End of term

I was busy yesterday making these two gift bags for my childrens teachers, they are a mix of machine sewing and alot of handstitching. The one you can see below is made with one-off hand-dyed linen from Kates Kloths, lined with Laura Ashley silk. It has a cotton lace trimmed silk cuff chosen by my little DS, handmade and carved/etched flower abalone shell buttons to attach the strap. Also handmade by me with DS's help, a corsage pin that has a velvet flower, beads, silk ribbon, chiffon ribbon and lace trim. I like corsages/fancy bits and drool over the bags in Monsoon Accessorize.




The next bag is made from Lene Bjerre very muted fabric in a soft beige with grey flowers. I added the stripe ribbon which is made from silk and linen to the centre panel. This bag is also lined with silk with a cuff trimmed with lace that my DD chose for the embelishment, it is actually a cotton lace and is not shiny at all! The handle on this bag was attached from the inside and is made from linen and silk ribbon. These silk/linen ribbons are gorgeous, I got them in York a couple of days ago but they are actually French.




Last picture is to show the corsage decoration I made for the bag. This picture was a rushed one this morning but does show a much better colour representation. For this decoration I used very thin black gingham ribbon and silk ribbon for the tails, I ruched a bit of cotton lace added a handmade fancy button then a little silver dangly charm saying 'Love' that my DD had chosen for this.




My photos really do not do these justice at all as the colours are much, much better IRL as I did not have time to mess about photographing and getting a good capture of the colours ;-) I was up until nearly 2am last night finishing them off so they would be ready for this morning :-)) Each bag contains a little treat and I very much hope they are going to be loved as they took a surprising amount of time to do really and I fancied keeping them ;-)) These are the first non cross-stitch bags I have made and felt quite pleased with what I came up with in the end from a few ideas in my head.

Once again thanks for visiting and I hope you all have a great weekend, today is one of my favourite days of the year, (Summer holidays starting .....yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ;-))