Pennants and Bags

I've been busy sewing last weekend and also earthing out my embellishing machine to make a bag.  The pennants have been towards to "Pennants for Patchworkers" organised by the Miniature Group of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles and will be sold in a tombola at the Festival of Quilts later this month.  Here my little effort - 3 little quilted pennants.

The first is just wavy quilting with variegated thread on hand dyed blue fabric, which was quite quick and easy to do as I've done this on postcards before. (Please excuse grotty ironing board cover)

The next one I made was inspired by a magazine article in Popular Patchwork by Sheena Norquay who made some seasonal tablemats and I've pictured that next to the magazine.

Then on Sunday I made one with sort of Clematis flowers - raw edged applique flowers (the flower fabrics used are hand dyed pinks and mauves) and beads sewn in the middle of the flowers.

I took part in the Embellisher Yahoo Group swap with a small bag - 6" square - rather fancied doing that and sent this swap to Jenny in Wales and received a bag today from Anne in Hertfordshire. Hence the dusting off of the Embellisher machine. I should have taken photos in progress when making my bag, but didn't so may have another go as I quite like this technique.

I layered a felt base with wool roving, topped that with painted Bondwebbed and after applying that I chopped some bits of gold foil to iron on top of that.  On top of this I layered some fine chiffon.  I did some hand embroidery when I finished with the needlefelting.  Having made a cord strap and joined the lining to the bag I added a daisy button.

From Anne I received a lovely red leather backed bag, with some roving and yarn with sequins and beads on the front.  Inside were some findings which will come in useful for further bag making, no doubt.

This week we're on holiday for a couple of weeks first of all going to a family wedding in Surrey and hope for a nice weekend. After visiting Dorset and catching up with people we'll be heading up for Birmingham and the Festival of Quilts at the NEC.  I'll be visiting on Thursday and Friday this year - the first time I've visited over 2 days as last year it was difficult to fit everything that I wanted to there.