Spiral scrappy slow stitching

On impulse, I decided to take a break from making embroidered felt birds - and stuffing myself with Easter chocolate - to start this bit of slow stitching. I've got the urge to make a circle bag. I've seen this kind of thing on YouTube, where a drawstring bag's made of a circle of material, and when the drawstring's loosened it opens out completely. So the fabric lays flat, meaning you can see exactly what the contents of your bag are and don't have to rummage around inside to pull out whatever you're wanting. Or, you can use the bag as a lunch bag, and when it's opened out that becomes a mini picnic blanket or place mat.

I also liked idea of using even the tiniest scraps of material, including delicate pieces of silk almost too fragile to use.

As well as little scraps that wanted using up, I also wanted to use lengths of embroidery thread that weren't wound around spools.

These are the leftovers from when I've divided up a six strand embroidery thread for other projects. They're all colours of the rainbow, and I decided to use them up in my slow stitching. I cut out a square of unbleached calico, and began by inserting it into an embroidery hoop. Then arranged fabric scraps from the centre outwards, in a kind of spiral. That led me to doing my slow stitching in a spiral too. Most of my fabric scraps have their raw edges turned under, but not all of them.

This is as far as I've got. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to construct the circle bag. It'll need a lining, and of course I'll need to work out how the drawstring's going to be inserted. I quite fancy cutting out eyelets, embroidering around them to make a feature of them. Let's see how I get on, and hopefully I'll have something to show you in my next blog post.

Hope you're enjoying your day, and bye for now.

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