Making bags from old clothes.

One of Kathryn`s bags made from a cuffed sleeve of a coat

Went for a workshop on making bags from old clothing,it was with 2 of Studio Sevens artists Kathryn Clarke and Corinne Hockley,they had some good ideas and where most helpful during the session. Kathryn had made several bags to give us inspiration and they were great, using the pockets ,belts and frills from the original garment she designed the new bag. This is a photo of a frilled skirt obtained as were all the garments from a charity shop in the photo above you can see how she has used the frills to make rosettes.

See how easy it is to have pockets in your bag when you take them straight off a man`s suit!

A pillow cover made from the pullover in the photo.

The rest of the bags are the great work of the other students.

This started life as a woollen skirt plus tweed additions.

A jumper and blouse.

Denim jeans

These are so cute remind me of Victorian bathing costumes.

Work in progress.

These are mine started off life as an evening jacket now too small an getting a bit scruffy, the first bag was made by sewing the tops of the puffed sleeves together, I think this will end up as a peg bag, the smartest one on the block!

I might just possibly use this one.

Abundance of squashes

We had a really good crop of squashes last summer, even did well with the butternut, strange how you plant seeds from a butternut and end up with about 3 different varieties, is it because a butternut is a hybrid ? They are stored all over the house including the bookshelves on the landing, and look what happened to them over Christmas, an Aussie touch me thinks.

Happy New Year.

A very Happy and healthy New Year to everyone. We all suffered over the holidays with a really nasty cold which was such a shame as I gave it to my daughter who had come home for Christmas from Oz. for the first time in 13 years and she suffered for a week. I love making these papier mache faces the one below is in our bathroom adorned with shells picked up abroad. This one with giraffe legs has sphagnum moss for hair and dried fungi as an adornment.

I did some more felting before Christmas with my grand daughter this necklace is made by felting a roll of wool then adding another layer around it felting again until you have several felted layers it is then fulled until it is firm and cut at an angle to form the "beads" it worked quite well but really needed a firmer finish.

My granddaughter using multi coloured wool got bored with hers and it didn't really felt well, so when I sliced it into pieces it started to fall apart.I put the pieces in a net bag with the next load of washing and lo and behold I ended up with these "pebbles"I was very chuffed it is great when things turn out well.

Stuffed peppers they just looked so photogenic.

To celebrate our daughter arriving for Christmas I made these pennants, a great way to use up some scraps and just look at the colour of that sky.

We had a walk to the Purton hulks, these are old vessels which were driven into the side of the Severn to stop the river eroding into the canal, which is metres away at this point.They are quite haunting, and sad old timbers covered in lichen with beautiful markings well worth visit.

We next have the youngest and oldest females present at Christmas having there beauty treatments thanks to the kindness of Lisa, they looked years younger and a lot less scary afterwards ,thanks Lisa.