Have a heart ... or four

It's early on Sunday afternoon and I'm all caught up with The Archers, along with several political podcasts, not that either are filling me with much joy at the moment. Anyhow, I thought I'd show you how this heart shaped sewing case turned out. If you recall from my last post, it's based on a pattern by StitchWitch, picked up in a charity shop for 50p. First off, I'll say I'm impressed by anyone who tackles the tricky art of writing instructions. They're not easy to do, and on the whole these are pretty good.

This is the sewing case closed up, with a button and ribbon loop fastening.

Here is it opened out. There's a pocket at the top, and on the left is a section for storing scissors in. The original design has fabric strips glued in, intended to push your needles & pins into. I substituted a flat rectangle of pale brown felt, blanket stitched into place.

My small Fiskars scissors aren't quite small enough to neatly fit inside, and I think it'd work better if I'd included a couple of felt pages rather than a piece of sewn-down felt to act as a kind of needlebook. But the main problem encountered was with the fabric 'hinges' joining the hearts together. I could easily insert them between the straight edges of the half-hearts, but not position them properly around the curved edges of the whole hearts. So I ended up stitching those curved edges together, which worked just as well. I reckon I'd make this sewing case again, but with the emphasis on stitching rather than gluing sections together, and using a heart template that has straight sides instead of these curved sides.

The other thing I've been messing with is trying to make a Jessie Chorley style charm brooch. This is my second attempt - not yet finished - and it's better than my first go. I think I was previously trying too hard to recreate one of her brooches, rather than going for something that was more 'me'.

I've ordered a mixed bag of Tibetan silver charms off eBay, so will wait for those and choose one that looks good. Add some beading too, and maybe patch on another mini piece of fabric. It's fun to sew on a small scale, getting the balance right between adding too much detail and adding too little.

............ Okay, it's several hours later now. I'm relaxing on the sofa, having been for a long healthy walk with my sister-in-law, then over to theirs for tea (veggie biriyani followed by fresh strawberries, raspberries and vanilla ice cream). So I'll belatedly finish this blog post by hoping you've had a great weekend and here's to Monday rolling around again. Let's see what a new week brings.

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Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

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