design

New Postsecret uploads

Inspiration from the book by Frank Warren called Postsecret

Frank Warren gave people postcards or left them in public places and asked people to share a secret. The postcards were invitations to contribute a secret to a group art project. The secret could be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession or childhood humiliation. It could reveal anything as long as it is true and it has never been shared with anyone else.

The book inspired me to produce my own postcards… using lyrics that stand out to me.

My “postcards” can be viewed here: gillianludlow.com

Here are the new designs I’ve recently added…

Tea towel bag

I like to create bags from everyday items. Here I have used two tea towels, some denim and a section of a pillow case.

The tea towels I used were bought as a pack of two. I kept them together using one for the outside and the other for the inside. The inside pocket was made using part of a grey pillow case. The denim was from a jacket.

Denim dress/NYC bag

I bought the denim dress from a supermarket. I bought the new york city t-shirt when I visited New York mid 2016 and wasn’t sure what to do with it, I knew I didn’t want to wear it! I created a tote bag using the dress, t-shirt and one other fabric. (photo of the bag to follow)

Heart cushions…

My heart cushions are now complete!

On the cushion with the treble clef in the middle of the heart, my ladder stitch needs work! I think I stuffed it a little too much so when I came to sew the ladder stitch the edge went all lumpy. The other two cushions are sewn up quite well.

New drawstring bag completed

I followed the plan…

I always seem to have a problem with the size of the fabric. When the pieces are cut out they are the same size, but when they are sewn together they change! This wasn’t that much of a problem thankfully!

New drawstring bag

The vision I had for my new drawstring bag was to sew each section together as I went (outside 1 to inside 1 then the same with 2), then sew the two together. It was a disaster!!

Then I thought it wouldn’t have worked anyway because the four ends of the drawstring sections were all open. The objective was to only have one side open, because that is what went off with the first attempt!

With some more thought… I came to the idea of putting the bag together like I would a tote bag. SO… the first thing is instead of having four separate sides, have two sides double width and fold it in half when I come to sew it together. The second thing is to have the top outside section larger than the inside section and fold it over and sew around the top edge.

One of the things I have to be really spot on with are the measurements to make sure that both sides (apart from the one top section) are exactly the same size… that’s the plan anyhow!

Drawstring bag

I was looking for things to make and I came across this sewing blog: Threading My Way and a tutorial for a drawstring bag.

I had a go at making the bag…

The main difficulty I had was when I attached the lining to the main bag around the drawstring section (blue rose fabric). For some reason the two sections together don’t match up correctly at the drawstring openings.

What is different from the tutorial are the dimensions that I’ve used for my bag, they are: (cut 2 of each) 4″ x 10″ top, 2″ x 10″ drawstring section, 8″ x 10″ bottom, 14″ x 10″ lining (measurements in inches).

New heart cushion

Following on from the post “New hearts”, this is the first new heart cushion I have finished… it’s filled with hollowfibre filling and I’ve used the ladder stitch to close the gap. It’s not shown on this image but for the back I used a different shade of blue – fat quarter, cut to the size (slightly bigger) of 12″ by 13″ (inches).

New hearts

The new heart designs are coming on well. I’ve got to the stage where I’m ready to sew around the edges of the fabric for each heart. I think these ones will be square-ish!!