Bag Envy

Have you ever seen a friend's bag and thought "I'd like a bag just like that". Well this has happened to me on many occasions but today I was happily in bag heaven (or its earthly equivalent) when I had to forcibly remove my bag from the shoulder of someone else at The Cotton Patch who had taken rather a shine to it.

Not that my bag will appeal to everyone of course but its kinda funky and quirky and that's the kind of bag that works for me. We saw the fabric by Echino at a show in February and could not resist it (the fabric is on our website with other fabrics by Echino as well as some embellishing tape, some of the fabrics are even more quirky and funky!). The fabric is great for bags being a linen/cotton mix. The pattern is the Swing Bag by Amy Butler which if you've never made a bag before is a great starting point - its not that difficult and in total took 3 hours to make (including a substantial amount of checking it looked good in a mirror and taking some photos so really about 2.5 hours)

To give it stability I used Duck Cloth 10oz which is what Amy recommends in her pattern.

The green fabrics has a design that runs from selvedge to selvedge so it would also make a great blind. Watch out for these fabrics on our website soon!

So a great project for an evening when you can't get in the garden due to torrential rain :-) and its reversible too!

Pom Pom's, Yo Yo's and Festival Finalising

Things are very busy here today again - but we still had time for a quilt show of the quilts from Kaffe's new book - "Quilts in the Sun" and before we knew it our office was full! Kaffe will be be doing book signings throughout Festival (timings for these will be on our stand D20).



Adam will be cutting the Rowan fabrics at the show and here he is with one of the quilts from Quilts in the Sun - a snowball design called "Gilded Snowball" by Kaffe Fassett.

We will also have the latest designs and sizes of Yo Yo makers (otherwise known as Suffolk Puff) and Pom Pom makers. Hearts and Flowers Yo Yos have now been added to the Circles (new extra small size is also available) which can be used to accessorise bags, scarves, quilts and more. Here is a selection of the Pom Poms that David (our web designer) and Janet put together this weekend when they had a few minutes spare.

All of the Pom Pom makers, Yo Yo makers and examples of them will be on our stands at D20 and E20 - we hope to see you later this week!