Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the BIG things...

Sunday 1 June 2014

Beachbag Ta-dah!

Summer is here!! We've spent a much needed long-weekend at our summerhouse, and the weather has been amazing! We're surrounded by clouds of Yellow Broom. The sight and scent are so wonderful ❤️
 I love this place!


A few woderful  days off work, and time to dig out the old sewing machine and start a new project...

I'm welcoming JUNE, the first wonderful summer-month by making myself a HUGE beachbag ❤️

A quite bold project for someone like me, actually...I'm just a wanna-be sewer, and the little I know about sewing is 100% selftaught and has more of a winging-it-as -I-go-along approach, than actually knowing what I'm doing...

My old sewing machine sounds like it is going to take-off and fly away when I step on the pedal, and it keeps stopping all the time, making all kinds of strange and unpleasant noises.......So frustrating! The needle breaks at least 3 times during a session (yes, I'm probably using the wrong size/type of needle, but what do I know?), the threads keep getting all tangled up on the backside, and the stiches are uneven and messy....
All in all, sewing is really a test to my patience, but I so want to be able to do it! There are so many beautiful things I could make if I just mastered this craft!

So, I take the Pippi Longstocking approach: " I have not tried this before, so I'm sure I can do it" ❤️
A great approach to all new challenges in life, I think.

We are going to California this summer (we're leaving in a little more than 2 weeks...eeek!), and for that purpose I think I really need a BIG beachbag, right?
So that is what I bravely and optimisticly set out to make....

I found a great bag in one of my wonderful Tilda books, which did not seem too difficult to make for a newbie


All in all a good plan, and I optimisticly started the quilting. It was so fun and satisfying to quilt these nice Tilda fabrics together. I love the feeling of quilted cotton fabric ❤️
It has such a "summery" feel to it, I think. It reminds me of carefree childhood summers with picnics and book-reading on big, lovely quilts....❤️


Loving the way the quilting turned out. And the seams are all neat and even!!! So far so good !!

Instead of a zipper, I found these great little turqoise hooks in my stash, and I also added these wonderful pom-poms to the edging. They have been waiting patiently in my stash (for years!) to be put into good use, and I think they gave the bag that little extra touch of playfulness that it needed. These were stiched on by hand with invisible stiches. 
It's all in the details, so I added some nice buttons to the handles, just for decorative purposes..
Just a little touch of pinkish red and a little bling...I love bling ❤️




Adding all these decorations were all fun an easy work. The problems occured when I was going to sew the whole thing together...The pattern in the book made no sense to me, and I finally had to give that up,  and figure it out by myself. I had to cut the fabric differently, leaving me with a lot of extra work and some bad language.....

The result is nothing like the one in the book: it is much bigger, no zipper, different bottom and different shape, but you know what: I LOVE  IT ❤️And I'm so proud of the fact that I actually made this on my own - and that I also ended up "designing" it....


Want to see how the bag ended up looking? 

Ta-dah!!! 




Vamos a la playa!!  I'm soooo ready for the sunny Californian  beaches!!


I' m now completely hooked on sewing, so I'm already planning on making many more in different colours and sizes. One can never have too many bags, right?? Or shawls, or shoes, or cups or.......well you know how it goes...❤️

I guess I have to wish for a new sewing machine for my birthday....



                                               ❤️Live - Laugh - Love❤️









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