Sunday's Simple Sewing: Little Linen Bag

Simple projects, in these complicated times, seem to be what I want to lean into. I want to make things that don't require too much "figuring out" but rather things I can relax into because they are easy or repetitive or I've made similar before. Perhaps, there's a comfort in a familiar process and a reassurance that it will all turn out fine. So it was with this little blue ribbon bag.

Little blue ribbon bag.

This sweet little bag is the first in a set I am going to make from an unfinished and beautiful vintage tea cloth. A tea cloth gifted to me, amongst many other linen-y treasures, by the lovely and generous Maria. The tea cloth is embroidered with swirling ribbons tied in bows, twining green stems and lazy daisy flowers. 

Vintage and antique linens are my favourite fabrics to sew with. They are often soft with age and use and embroidered with sweet motifs. They often come with stories! Sometimes, their motifs may be incomplete or the fabric may be threadbare or stained in some places. So, choosing what to make will often depend on how much of the fabric can be salvaged and re-purposed into something new.

I made this little blue ribbon bag using the instructions detailed by Jude Van Heel, of the utterly gorgeous Fairy Wren Cottage, in the latest issue of Grass Roots magazine (#257). It was so very simple to make:

I made a template and cut out the pieces for the bag.

I stitched tiny french knots for flower centres.

I mended a few flowers as their centres had frayed.

I sewed it together and threaded through a blue ribbon. 

(It had to be blue!)

A project like this embodies a simplicity that gladdens my heart. I 💙that it makes something new from something old in a world where older things are sometimes just discarded. 

More of Maria's pretty tea cloth.

I am looking forward to sewing up more of these little bags, with the fabric from Maria's gifted tea cloth. I think I should be able to make at least three more. One with an orange bow and purple flowers, one with a purple bow and orange flowers and one with blue flowers tied with a pink bow. More simple sewing ahead!

I'd love to know what simple projects you are working on too.

Meg

Frugal on Friday

On this particular Friday, I thought I would join in with Fiona, over at Stay Home Instead, and list some of the frugal things I've managed to do over the last little while. I enjoy reading about the frugal things that other people do in their daily lives as there's a wealth of ideas for saving money among them. 

I regularly visit Fiona as she posts a list every Friday (I think she is a very organised person!) On Saturdays, I pop over to read Wendy's frugal ideas at My Abundant Life and I also like catch up with Kath's list too that she posts on her blog Four Miles North of Nowhere.  Here's my own list:

A fresh loaf of banana bread. 

1.  Made banana bread to use up two over-ripe bananas in our fruit bowl. I froze most of the slices. A piece of nourishing banana bread makes a nice alternative to toast at breakfast time.

Pre-loved linens drying on the line.

2.  Found some pretty op-shop linens for less than $10.  There are six little cotton napkins, each embroidered with a little cross-stitched rose, that we will use here at home. The two longer panels of fabric, decorated with beautiful Australian native flowers, are actually old curtains. I plan to make cushion covers out of them. I think they'll make lovely gifts!

A sweetly-stitched heart.

(Design by Charlotte Lyon at House Wren Studio.)

3.  I have been steadily stitching different little motifs onto tiny cotton bags ready for Christmas giving. I have had a stash of these bags, which I bought for a song at Reverse Garbage, years ago. With a little embellishment, and a pretty drawstring ribbon, they are perfect for gifting soap, seeds, hair scrunchies and other tiny gifts. Some motifs I have stitched have been free and others, like Charlotte's, I have paid a small amount to be able to download. I know I will use her designs over and over again.

 A home sewn skirt.

4.  I finished sewing this simple A-line skirt using fabric I already had in my stash. The only thing I had to buy was an invisible zipper. I used the pattern I made from an old skirt. I absolutely love the tiny white flock of birds flying all over the most gorgeous sky blue. I have worn this skirt several times already!

A gift for a friend.

5.  Wrapped a birthday gift, Furoshiki style, using dyed fabric I had in my stash. (It originally came as a large remnant from my local community centre.) My son then created a handmade card using craft supplies we already had here at home. (I find a pot of coloured marker pens comes in very handy!) This saved having to purchase wrapping paper or a card.

I think it is really good thing to think mindfully about the things we do, not only to save money but also to re-use and re-purpose resources. While I doubt I'll be organised enough to post a frugal list every Friday, I may do it periodically just to remind myself that it is a priority in our household.

I'd love to hear what you've been up to on the frugal front at your place.

Meg

A Posy of Nasturtiums

As I wandered along a little local street, the subtle fragrance of a familiar flower reached me on the breeze. At first, I couldn't quite place that delicate scent but then I saw masses and masses of brilliantly coloured nasturtiums. Spilling out from a garden bed, trailing down an embankment and covering part of a grassy 'footpath' with garlands of their flowers.  As there were so many, I picked a little posy and brought home some of their orange, yellow and red happiness to place upon our table.

A little posy of nasturtiums.

Such vibrant colours! 

Nasturtium in Latin means "nose twist"!

I haven't grown nasturtiums sucessfully but now I am wondering why ever not? They seemed to be thriving in the little street just a few over from ours. They would not only make me happy every time I saw them, the bees would be beside themselves too. There were many bees foraging among the nasturtiums I found, buzzing with abandon. I wonder if native bees like ours love them too?

The other thing about nasturtiums is that they are edible, their vibrant petals but also their leaves. I shared a slice of a quiche once, flavoured with peppery nasturtium leaves from the very garden where we ate, and it was delicious. I have read too, at the link above, that you can pickle the seeds and use them like capers. Clarissa, over at Simply by the Beach, posted a list of twenty good reasons to grow nasturtiums.  I think I've talked myself into it ... a niche for growing nasturtiums needs to be found!

It would be lovely to wander out and pick nasturtiums from our own garden. There'd be flowers for the table, food from the garden and their subtle scent wafting along on the breeze.

Meg

p.s. Finding these little flowers reminded me that I have a little stitching of nasturiums that I did years ago. It was to be part of a quilt I never got anywhere near finishing but I've since used many of the flowery embroidered squares to make re-purposed bags like this one. Perhaps I will make one of these little bags over the weekend ... a gift for the gardener in the little street just over from ours who grows nasturtiums!

Tea Towel Drawstring Bag

A old and soft linen tea towel and a cross-stitched rosy doily, both costing just a few dollars each, have been re-purposed into a sweet little drawstring bag. 

A sweet bag made with re-purposed linens.

I had been wanting to sew a bag like this one ever since I came across Jude Van Heel's easy instructions in an issue of Grass Roots magazine (No. 244 Dec/Jan 2017/18). I found these beautiful linens quite a while ago and finally sewed them up in a project that took less than an hour to make. 💗

A vintage doily to decorate an old towel.

The colours in the rosy doily, the pinks and the browns and the greens, match in with the stripes of the tea towel so I think they go together quite well.  

Simple stitches sew the doily onto the tea towel.

Sewing the doily onto the tea towel was very easy. I used simple running stitches, sewing in and out of the little holes of the doily, all the way around until it was secure.  Then it was just a matter of sewing up one side and across the bottom of the folded tea towel to form the bag. A simple casing at the top, leaving room for a drawstring to run through it, and it was time for a ribbon. A lovely long blue satin ribbon, that came tied around a recent birthday gift, was perfect and so it was reused as the drawstring to finish off this sweet and simple project.

A satiny ribbon for a drawstring.

A tea towel drawstring bag like this could be used as a project bag, to hold a knitting or stitching project, or as an alternative to wrapping paper. Ours will be used to hold the gentle goat milk soaps we have collected to give to a special Grandma celebrating a birthday not far away.

What have you been making lately?

Meg

p.s.  You can visit Jude Van Heel, who lives in a sweet cottage in Tasmania, at Instagram:  @fairywrencottage

Plastic Bag Ban?

A simple children's story,  A Bag and a Bird, from the amazingly talented author and illustrator, Pamela Allen, tells a tale of the potential danger that plastic bags pose to our environment and our wildlife. In her story, it's an ibis that gets tangled in one of these lightweight nightmares but it could just as easily have been a pelican or a turtle or any number of other sea creatures. In this story, all ends well but we all know that isn't so outside of the fictional world of children's picture books.

A simple story about a big problem.

The harm plastic does in our environment is, I think, widely known and commonly accepted. So today, when a ban on lightweight plastic bags comes in to force in the Australian state where I live, I found myself asking the question, "What took so long?" As with many things, the wheels of government turn much more slowly than if we just make a personal decision and act on it.  

A little flyer from our local shop.

While lightweight plastic bags, the kind you often (used to) see piled up in supermarket trolleys are now banned here, and in other the Australian states, there are still plastic bags to which the ban does not apply. Heavyweight plastic bags, thin plastic produce bags, bin liners and garbage bags are still going to be available from retailers in the state where I live. Like Cheryl, over at A Simply Good Life, I think that these "acceptable" plastics will just end up in landfill eventually. Why not ditch these plastic bags altogether? Here are the things we do at our place to avoid using plastic bags:

Instead of bringing home groceries in any kind of plastic bag, I have collected fabric bags, some made from organic cotton and some from reclaimed cottons. I 💚 that these can be used over and over again and that they can be washed if they get a bit grotty. I send them, shredded into small strips, to the compost bin when they are beyond repair.  Perhaps, you might be lucky enough to have Boomerang Bags operating in your community and will have that source of reusable bags to use. When I go to the market, I take my basket and a few fabric bags so that I don't bring home any plastic from there either.

A few of our plastic bag alternatives.

Instead of throwaway plastic produce bags, we have a set of little mesh and cotton drawstring bags. I bought mine from an ethical online store, when they were on sale, but they can be readily sewn up from mesh fabric or even old curtain material. Here's a tutorial and a pattern (scroll down through blog post to find it) for how to make them. 

My market basket.

One common question that seems to have been on people's minds, in the lead up to our plastic bag ban, has been, "What will we line our bin with now?" We don't line our little kitchen bin with anything anymore but Liz, over at Eight Acres, uses sheets of newspaper to line hers. We use sheets from the little local newspaper, that lands on our driveway every week, to wrap any "icky scraps" before putting them in the freezer. Now, we don't have many "icky scraps", because we compost our fruit and veg scraps and our dog takes care of most of our meat scraps, but I find that by wrapping and freezing what we do have to dispose of, there's no oozy, smelly stuff in our bin. A quick rinse out and it's ready to go back under the kitchen sink. I just have to remember to put any wrapped scraps in the wheelie bin on rubbish collection day.

Perhaps, remembering to bring along reusable bags when shopping will be one of the biggest challenges in the early days of this plastic bag ban. Having lightweight plastic bags, to plonk our purchases in, is something we've all gotten used to at the checkout. There was a time though when plastic bags did not exist, as hard as that may be to imagine given the way plastics are such an ever-present part of our lives now. That means though that we can get used to doing without them again too.  Perhaps, there will be a happy outcome, just as there is in the story of A Bag and a Bird.

Do you have a plastic bag ban in place where you live? What alternatives do you, or are you planning to, use?

Meg

Here & Now 17

Our days here of late have been punctuated by showers and the odd thunderstorm; all bringing beautiful rain. The soil is moist to a decent depth and the water tanks are full, ready for the hot Summer weather that I'm sure will come. For now, I am relishing these milder days, overcast skies and the lush growth and blossoming in the garden after rain. 

A little pink puffball on Bees Ruby (Armeria).

 Simple & sweet homemade shortbread.

A vintage doily sewn onto a re-purposed bag. 

My favourite grevillea in bloom.

Loving //  All the native flowers that are out in bloom now. Grevilleas are a favourite!

Eating //  Our own crunchy  cucumbers. So fresh!  Homemade shortbread too. So yummy!

Drinking //  Lots & lots of water!

Feeling //  Content after a day working in our garden.

Making //  Simple things like wrap skirts & little  bags with lovely fabrics & vintage linens.

Thinking //  How wonderful this cool & rainy weather is!

Dreaming //  Of  being in Sydney soon with two of my oldest & closest friends.  

                      

Sarah, over at Say, Little Hen, hosts this lovely little link-up beginning on the 10th of each month. Whenever I see each of her new Here & Now posts, I find myself wondering how it's been a whole month since the last one. It seems time flies!

I hope the early days of your November has been a happy ones.

Meg

                           

Leaves on Linen Project Bag

A scattering of embroidered leaves, stitched upon soft and worn linen, becomes a sweet drawstring project bag. 

A handmade project bag.

This is the first project bag I have made after admiring for so long those stitched and sewn by the very talented Melissa Wastney of tiny happy.  While my stitches are nowhere near as fine or as tiny as Melissa's, I am happy all the same with my simple leaves on linen. 

 Pieces ready to be sewn up into a project bag.

The pattern for my project bag came from Melissa's book, Sweet and Simple Handmade, which I borrowed from my local library. The fabric came from my stash: with the leaves embroidered on the aging linen of a very old tea towel; the lining is a very soft cotton printed with tiny fruits; the casing made from scraps of silk that I dyed in a workshop on natural plant dyes. I used a sheer gold ribbon I had here too for the drawstring though I think I will replace this with a much narrower, silk ribbon to make the bag close more readily.

A handmade linen bag lined with a soft printed cotton.

This project bag is large enough to hold a small knitting or craft project, a gift for a dear friend or a good novel and one's reading glasses (if, like me, you need them). I plan to make several more, just like this one, but instead of leaves I want to stitch feathers and flowers, berries and butterflies, maybe even mushrooms!

Meg