Still sewing

This is still a knitting blog but I'm rather obsessed with sewing right now. My knitting is secret and I'm on a tight deadline so my 'sitting' time is spent knitting frantically. 3/4 of a long sleeve to finish before the end of the day. But I've also got to sew up a simple sweater and knit a neckline. Not sure I'll manage that.

I always tell my students that if they don't practice the new stuff they've learnt as soon as possible they'll forget it. So no Monday night I thought I'd better practice what Jo taught me when she left her sewing machine with me on Monday morning. So I thought I'd make another project bag.

I wanted one that was about 50% bigger than most of my small project bags. I do have some large sweater bags but they're designed for straight needles and I always use circulars so the bags just end up being too big for my needs.

I'd bought a couple of small fabric bundles on Monday afternoon. On Monday evening i sat down and made this project bag which is big enough for a sweater. When the picture was taken it housed a full sweater body. At the moment it has a sweater body plus one sleeve and there's still room.

 I added a ribbon so I can book it to my handbag or carry it. The lining is the same pattern but with colours reversed.

I've tried to ignore the sewing machine all week as I've got too many deadlines this week. But yesterday I decided if I was going to sew this weekend which I'd like to do then I'd need fabric and I don't have a fabric stash. So I popped down to Trago and got the bottom 3 fabrics in the picture beow. The spotty ones are oil cloth. Afterwards I popped in to the local craft shop to get some yarn dyes and ended up buying 2 more fabrics. I love the top one and it wasn't cheap.

 I've got some ideas for bags. I'd like to mak a medium handbag in the green spotty fabric. this will be the trial version of the big workshop bag I'd like to make next week. I've not got a pattern so last night I cut out the template for the lining and the gusset. I cut out the fabric and started sewing the lining together. No idea if I'm doing this teh right way. I'm making it up as I go along.

 The postman just arrived and a week ago that top book on Shetland Lace would have been my top priority.

 But that got tossed  put carefully aside in favour of the two bag making books. I do fancy making those pannier bags for my bike. I've browsed through the Bag Making Bible quickly and it looks great. Lots of step by step photos and I think it'll help me a lot in working out how to make the handbag I've started on. 

 I'm thinking I may make the bucket bag on the cover in the lovely blue butterfly fabric.

Talking about bags and fabric, look at the goodies that arrived from Three Bags Full. Michele has long been my favourite knitting bag maker and I'm nowhere close to her standard of sewing.

Spinning has been abandoned in favour of deadline knitting and sewing this week but I'll be re-instating my daily spinning hour starting this weekend.

Look out for a newsletter later today or tomorrow and a blog post tomorrow with some special offers for this weekend, which happens to be my birthday weekend (which is partly why I decided to treat myself to those books).