Something different.............

Do you ever have this happen when you're at an Art Fair or you see something in a magazine & think to yourself, "I wonder if I could make one of those?" One of my friends has one of those drawstring backpacks that she got from the company she works for as a promotional type gift & it was kind of tacky, it was made from cheap acetate-like plastic & it had the company's name imprinted HUGE on the bag. I thought to myself, she wears that bag all of the time, what a great idea to try making her a nicer one & give to her as a Christmas gift. Here's how it turned out. Just to let you know, I had no patterns or instructions to follow & I learned A LOT as I was making the bag.

© 2009 Tracy Borders

© 2009 Tracy Borders

I hand dyed raw silk & cotton velveteen in different gradations of brown. (The colors are a lot richer than what you see in the photos.) I'm not sure I'd use those fabrics together again when constructing a piece. The fabrics moved all over the place. They were both somewhat stretchy & worked against each other while I tried to sew the blocks together, so I fixed that by adding a fusible interfacing to the backing of both fabrics. For the inside, I lined it with hand dyed (brown) cotton & added a couple of pockets, which I learned later, should have been placed towards the top of the bag instead of the bottom (everything seemed to land into the pockets at the bottom of the bag.)

© 2009 Tracy Borders

(That's my friend modeling her new bag.) I vowed after I made this one, that if I wanted one for myself, that I would buy one. Maybe, after I've been away from it for awhile, I might go back & try to make one for myself out of bamboo, NOT velveteen or raw silk!!