Upcycled Butterfly Bag

This bag caught my eye because of the color and texture but it was a tad plain. I dug into my wool stash and fussy cut a simple butterfly shape then added some bling for the body. Voila! An easy, cute project that got a lot of notice at the craft bazaar recently. 

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Frilly Tote Bag

 

Here's an easy project I did a few months ago. I saw this on the cover of Haute Handbags Spring 2012 issue (www.hautehandbagsmagazine.com) and fell in LOVE! Sierra Hocklander, the featured designer, gave great directions and it was pretty easy. I plan to do some more in different colors (think holidays!) but I stuck with blue and white on this one so it could go in a raffle basket at my son's school. It turned out so cute it was hard to give it up, but at least its for a good cause!

Start with a plain canvas tote bag. Cut four fabric strips 4" wide. Add a zigzag stitch on each side of the strip and ruffle the strip. Then sew the strips onto the bag from the bottom up.

 For the flower I used the leftover end of a ruffle strip and voila! I really, really wish I could take credit for this idea! All of Sierra Hocklander's pieces are gorgeous! You can check out her blog at www.thebluerobincottage.blogspot.com. She is a great inspiration.

All ready to go with my tag attached!

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Glue Resist - Coloring with Stitch

Yay! As promised, here are the final photos of the glue resist bag (scroll down to see the post from a couple weeks ago). I L-O-V-E free form stitching. It is so freeing to just dive in with no expectations of perfection. Messy, swirly fun!!!

I am addicted to doodle flowers so this was right on. I did find out pretty quickly that in order to stitch on painted fabric I had to lower the tension on my machine by quite a bit. It was down to between 2 and 3 for this. I also learned the hard way that you must REMEMBER to readjust the tension before you start another project!

I love blue flowers, probably because they aren't very common in nature. It made perfect sense to me to make the center of this flower blue. I did stick with traditional green for the stem. I can't wait to do more "drawing" on fabric with stitches! 

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Glue Resist Fabric Treatment

I've been reading about different fabric treatments and decided I had to try the Glue Resist technique - where glue is added, paitned over then washed off to create a blank area. I grabbed a plain tote bag, stamped it, then went to work with Elmer's Glue. It had been ages since I'd used Elmer's and it was pretty fun - kinda like being a kid again.

I added a little glue here and there where it shrank and pulled away from itself in the first stages of drying. The drying time took much longer than I expected so I put the bag in the laundry room for a couple days and forgot about it.

Once the glue was totally dry I used acrylic paint on the design areas and stenciled a few additional flowers.

When the paint dried I threw the bag in the washer (on warm) to get rid of the glue.

I really liked the resulting design. This weekend I plan to add free motion stitching to complete the tote.

Ready for stitching! I'll post the grand finale next week!

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