Wedding Accessorise Finished at Last!

Hi all! Gosh it's been a busy few days, but I'm not going to whinge about work etc on my lovely blog. No, blog land is somewhere to escape to, where everything is bright and colourful, shimmery and shiny. Bloggers are kind and caring, funny and inspiring, creative and crafty. And I love it here!

To bring you up to date on my preparations for the wedding we've been invited to at the weekend... I have a floaty dress, I have a wrap, I have shoes, and now... TA,DAA!!!

I have a bag too.

I spent Sunday making myself a bag to match my wedding outfit. It was a bit of a suck it and see creation. I had a rough idea of what shape and style I wanted the bag to be, but no pattern. So it was pretty much stick a pin in there and stitch that bit to there and see what happens.

I made a few simple sketches in my sketch book. I find it really useful to have a sketch book, we were encouraged to keep one at college, somewhere to empty your head! Although right from being a teenager I've always had a book where I would doodle and roughly plan the items that I made. It's quite nice to look back through it and remember all the things that I've made over the years, as quite often items are made for someone else or given away. It's also good to look back with a critical eye, and think, well actually that was quite good, or actually I should have made that this way instead. All in all, sketchbooks can only be a good thing, there's never a wrong doodle, or an incorrect sketch, after all it's a private place for me to empty my creative thoughts and ideas!

The bag is made from silk dupion that I dyed myself (as you've seen in the last few posts!) I machine embroidered the silk onto a stiff iron on interfacing, to create a rigid top that the rest of the bag would hopefully drape down from, in scrunchy crinkles. I also needed to attach a magnetic fastener. (unfortunately I didn't take a photo of that, cos I was too busy swearing at it!)

This is the lining, made from an old curtain sample I picked up in a charity shop years ago. I needed something quite firm and strong on the inside as the silk is quite soft and floppy, and I need it to hold my camera and mobile phone. I didn't want it to look like a wet sock with a brick in it!

Here's the lining with the silk outer fabric stitched on to it. I got the silk to crinkle by wetting it and then twisting it up and leaving it to dry. The silk hangs down about an inch longer than the lining at the bottom. (to avoid the brick in a wet sock effect!)

The hardest part was trying to fit the crinkly gathered up part into the embroidered top piece. (There were a few choice words, I can tell you.) At the same time trying to insert both ends of a little secret wrist strap (for those moments when you need to carry your bag, a wine glass and shake hands with someone)

The finishing touch is a large green fabric flower that I cut off a hair band and stitched onto a brooch back, and then pinned to the front of the bag.

All in all, I'm rather pleased with the finished ensemble, and I would just like to say thank you for all the encouragement you've given me with the fabric dyeing over the last few posts. It makes all the difference having a little bit of feed back from some crafty friends. Especially when you're short of time and you don't really know what you're doing!!!