An embroidered heart

There was only one pouch in my pouch love series to share on Valentines Day wasn’t there? And from a simple printed heart it’s blossomed into a large and very beautiful pouch.

It’s hard to believe that this is how it started - a test print for some bunting I made to celebrate my dad’s 90th birthday last year. The bunting was simply embroidered but I wanted to explore the interlocking circles this time round.

Unusually I don’t have any photos of it ‘in progress’ and I’m not really sure why - it definitely came with me on our trip to Glasgow last September and has been on the train to London too. After outlining the heart and before exploring the inner circles, I added several coloured stripes across the fabric, which reminded me of a 1970s/80s tracksuit.

And then I braved the circles trying not to have two of the same colours next to each other, which just about works. Embroidering the circles with my beloved chain stitch was incredibly mindful and relaxing. Once the main emblem and its stripes were complete, I still felt that it needed more, and at the back of my mind I remembered a cream/beige embellished fabric which I picked up at a WI stash sale, which might work with this.

I knew I wanted to make this one into a pouch, and so finding the fabric to go alongside this in my stash was a complete win. That fabric I had in mind absolutely worked, and also encouraged me to add several rows of cream chain stitch stripes above and below the heart to tie it all together.

And this is how it ended:

What’s even better is the lining was also in my stash - and while dark orange skulls on an orange background might not have been the natural choice on paper, once I saw the colours together there was no other choice for me. To finish it off, of course I needed poppers, and as the fold over flap was relatively large, it needed more than one - and so unable to choose between pink, orange and red, I had one of each!

If my embroidered heart pouch reminded you of one I’d already made - you’re not wrong, it’s a much larger version of the baroque lady version which was the first one I made at the bag making sewing course.

I’m loving them both, and I’m pretty sure there’s plenty more pouches to come!

'All the patterns' project bag

Before starting to make my Noughts and Crosses quilt I had a trial run of sewing curved blocks using all the patterns I’d pulled out of my stash, which left me with a very colourful test run. And as I don’t like to see anything go to waste, I was sure that I could do something with it.

And sure enough I could, even though it took a little while for the idea to materialise, let alone come to fruition. But as you’ll see, it’s the answer* to a question I regularly have, and so it’s a wonder it took so long.

It’s fair to say at almost 33cm by 30cm it’s the largest pouch I’ve made, but `I didn’t want to cut into the circle, which if you look close enough is just about visible in the jumble of patterns.

It also uses the same pale green backing material as the quilt, and I’ve frankenbatted some offcuts of wadding to give both the front and the back some extra oomph, even though that’s meant I’ve ended up with some wonky zigzag lines - but I’m ok with that, and will call it character!

THE ZIGZAG QUILTING FOLLOWS THE SHAPES OF THE OFFCUTS OF WADDING

*Yes, the answer is invariably ‘you need a pouch for that!’ - but unusually in this instance I’m not exactly sure what the question is, though I have plenty of projects which I’m sure will soon make themselves known.

A quick and easy pencil case

One of the things on the long list of stuff for the floral fancy workshop was a pencil and a fabric marking pen. Clearly I had pencils, but the fabric marker was on my shopping list - I decided that I needed a pencil case to put them in, and as I wasn’t sure exactly what the pencil was for I also looked out a rubber and a pencil sharpener (I like to be prepared!).

I do have a pencil case, two in fact, but they have a variety of pens in. And I could have emptied one out, as I did for the Adult Learning courses, but I also realised that once again the answer could quite easily be that I needed a new one to take out with me, rather than the ones I had for storage!

So after a quick internet search I found the free tutorial for an easy pencil case on the Merriment Design blog. Doubly useful as earlier whilst looking for something else I found a square of felt which I could use, and of course my eBay stash of zips was bound to have something I could use.

As it turned out there was a zip that exactly matched the colour of the bright yellow felt square. I also had a piece of material left from the gift tag pouches, which is cute even though it’s a Christmas fabric, technically.

Starting to sew

This pouch is a departure from my more usual pouch style, and has a more traditional pencil case look to it, although the zip is on the front rather than the top. The free tutorial was also easy to follow, and I think in total I made this in well under an hour, which is pretty good.

And yes, the yellow isn’t perhaps a natural choice to go alongside this material, but I like it (though as you’ll know I do like bright colours and have always liked yellow!). I’m also a fan of these super long zips, as they make it much easier for a zip novice like me. But using an extra long zip and then cutting it down to size has been a game changer in these pouches - I’m not sure the same approach would work for dressmaking though, but I’m happy to be corrected.

As you can see I did go for the quick and rough and ready approach, and I’m ok with that.

I didn’t press anything as I went, and I used the thread which was already on the machine - but no matter as I still ended up with a fab new pencil case.

And yes, I’m even using a couple of the ‘procrastination pencils’ - the messages on them are great, these two say: ‘you can’t possibly work in an untidy room and ‘you probably need another coffee’ - both of which can be very true!