Small things

I have a month-long break from study, so I hope to find a bit of time on the weekends to complete a few sewing or knitting projects. To celebrate the freedom, I allowed myself to make a couple of little things just for fun, without guilt about the unfinished projects that are still waiting for attention.

I made a simple bag from a pattern in a library book, Sew-licious Little Things by Kate Haxell. The bag needs a lot of fabric for not much carrying capacity, but it is so quick and easy to make that any novice could make one. The only modification I made to the pattern was to trim a little off the bottom of the lining so it does not bunch up inside the bag.

It might make a good knitting bag. What would you use it for?

The hardest part was finding two coordinating pieces of fabric large enough in my stash. A 60-centimetre piece is huge in my scrappy stash of fat quarters and 30-centimetre cuts.

I have another little project from Sew-licious Little Things to make this week before I have to return the book to the library.

I also made two more small open-wide zipper pouches as quick gifts. I bought the turtle fabric specifically for this purpose. I used half of what I bought, and now I must decide whether to make another pouch or save the rest for fussy cuts. The floral fabric was bought as a scrap, and the pouch used up all that I had.

You can never have too many pouches for emergency gifts.

Finally, I decided to prove my theory that my ‘Australia’ map pattern could be reduced to create a 4-inch block. Yes, it can!

Yes, the pieces are tiny!

I used linen for the background and raided my scrap box for the map. Many of the scraps were given to me by Susan, and I had such fun choosing which to use. I sorted the scrap box into piles, chose a state and started sewing. I did not plan too much until the last one or two states.

For this version of the map, I tried to favour blended colours, such as mustard-yellow, rather than pure colours, such as yellow. This was not always possible because of what I had in my scrap box, but I think the complex colours add an interesting richness.

The finished pincushion is 4 inches square and 1½ inches deep, and it is filled with crushed walnut shells. I fused a lightweight interfacing to all the linen pieces to help contain the walnut within the loose-weave fabric. I also fused some lightweight fleece to the underside of the map before assembling the pincushion.

The fabric pieces needed were so small that I was often cutting a scrap from a scrap and then putting the rest of the scrap back in my scrap box. It really made a negligible dent in the scrap pile, but I had fun on a rainy afternoon.