Skip to main content

A little blue rice bag

Here's the allotment.  Not providing much in the way of food at the moment, but oh boy!  Isn't it pretty?  
Yup, no doubt about it.  Prettiness everywhere you look.
Back at home, my sewing machine's playing up.  I changed the needle which improved things, but the tension's not right and I've tried different makes of thread and that helped a little.  I think the machine needs servicing, so will find out where I can get it done locally.  

While it was grudgingly behaving itself, my stroppy machine obliged by sewing the seams of this little bag.  It's based on the Japanese rice bags that I've seen being made in YouTube videos, and was an easy make.  

Five squares of fabric for the outer, five for the inner, small rectangles for the loops, cord and beads for the tie.  
I used cotton material, without interfacing, so the bag's quite floppy.  
A denim version would look rather handsome, don't you think?  
Pleased with this blue bag, I started making a larger version with pink as the predominant colour.  Will show you that when it's finished.  I've a feeling it won't be as successful, mainly because I reckon these bags look best when they're small and cute, not larger and a bit unwieldy.  Oh well, it's all a learning process, isn't it?  

Oh, before I go, yesterday's 'Year of Wonder' music was based on Nordic folk music.  Ribers No   8, Danish String Quartet.  While today's was the lush and romantic Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia from 'Spartacus' by Aram Khachaturian (1903 to 1978).  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

  It's Saturday afternoon, and I haven't done half the things I'd meant to.  Partly because I spent most of this morning messing about with paints, stencils and the gell plate.  Never mind, everything on today's 'To Do' list will join tomorrow's 'To Do' list ... it's hardly life or death if I don't haul the hoover around the room or pull up weeds in the front garden.   I thought I'd show you what I made on Wednesday.  I'd gone to my monthly StitchArt group, and this time we did something a little different.  There's a project called 'Threads of Freedom' which is working with various community groups across the city.  It's about creating little stitched pieces, some of which will be included in a textile panel to go on display at Leeds art gallery.  There was lots of fabric we could choose from to sew with, and I picked this vintage tray cloth with the roses embroidery.   My own embroidery's not a patch on those flo...

Another week's flown by ...

  Saturday's rolled around again, and it's not been the most eventful of days.  Cleaning and hoovering, a walk to the shops to buy groceries, an hour on the allotment, then home to do some odd tasks in the garden.  The strawberry plants are sending out runners, so I've been dealing with those, plus deadheading the perennial sunflowers, and cutting back the gone-over flowers on the sage and marjoram.  I'm sad to see those blooms gone as the bees loved them.  This afternoon I spent a few hours finishing 'Dawnlands' by Philippa Gregory.   It's a really good book, a page turner where you care about the characters and want to be reassured everything's going to work out well for them.  Plus you become enraged about the corruption of the so-called justice system at the time of the Stuart kings and queens, about transportation of prisoners to the West Indies, and about the vile nature of the sugar trade in the 1600s and the vast profits made from it....

Folding a zine and an alternative use for a bank card

  Hello again, and excuse me while I scratch my insect bites.  I don't know what it is, but at this time of year I'm invariably itching like crazy because I've been bitten by bugs.  It seems to coincide with blackberry-picking season, but whether that's purely coincidental I don't know.  Whatever's biting me, I'm obviously a tasty morsel in their world!  I might try using a highly scented oil like Tea Tree oil, see if that deters them.  Anyway, let's get on to more pleasant matters -  I'm having a go at making a zine style booklet.  Because I didn't have any paper large enough, I joined together two A3 sheets of sketchpad paper, using torn pieces of book pages for the joining.  I thought that'd look less noticeable than packing tape or similar.  Having chosen my colour scheme I used acrylic paint and an unwanted plastic bank card to apply the paint.  Plus a stencil, sponge and modelling paste.  Applying paint with a ATM card wa...