Day One on the Black Cat Bloghop! And a Giveaway!

Oct 19, 2014

Oooo I had so much trouble deciding what to make with this one. I have had two of the fabrics from the Black Cat Crossing range since the start of September but they were not speaking to me at all. I couldn't think of anything at all so I decided to take a break from them and make something else I'd been thinking of for a while. I took inspiration from the Japanese designs I'd been seeing...

I used some of the lovely woven japanese fabric oddments I've been picking up for all the outside fabrics.

The inside is a thrifted handkerchief. The frame was added with glue which is not strictly the japanese way, but my preferred way. As is traditional, the amount of glue you get on the fabric is related to the amount of trouble you took over decorating it - meaning I got a lot of it everywhere. But I did end up with a pouch to keep nail varnish and a small bottle of remover in.

This still left me with the black cat fabric and no ideas. I went back to flicking through a recent Japanese quilting magazine (my favourite is a bimonthly called Patchwork Tsushin and you can have a good dig around the website using the translate function on a Chrome browser) and saw this.

Aha...I cut five strips roughly 48mm wide across the width of the fabric and got to work with my new bias binding maker, which I picked up in Kyoto.

This gave me a series of 25mm strips ready for weaving. I cut the cream ones into four and left the black ones whole. I ironed thin interfacing onto the back of the whole to keep it in place and whipped up this drawstring bag.

The string is made from a thinner strip of the black fabric.

Phew - I finished this yesterday morning, just in time for the bloghop. Thank goodness inspiration struck at last!

Many thanks to Wicked Wendy and Madame Samm for this hop, and please go to the end of this post to see the full schedule and especially who else is taking part today - go and visit them too!

The Giveaway!

Regular readers might remember this Sew Together bag I made a few months ago?

Despite travelling a few times since then I have never actually used it. Deliberately challenging my usual colour palette is all very well but does tend to leave you with something that is not to your own tastes. Duh! So, would you like it? To win you just have to complete the Rafflecopter below. You get one entry for commenting (about anything) and another if you are a follower. I'll post internationally.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now go and visit today's hoppers!

Monday, October 20

Tuesday, October 21

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