Now that I'm done with the Fennec Fox, I've picked my new featured craft project,
Perrin's Starling Handbag.
I got to know Perrin through my site. She wrote a crazy-sweet post about me on her blog
Paper Clips and Play Pens. After just a couple of emails, I could tell she was the kind of direct, open, and passionate person that I get along with perfectly. I just love Perrin. :)
When I got my annual burr behind my eye about not having a futuregirl logo, I emailed Perrin to see if she was interested in helping me out, since she's a
freelance web designer. She was amazingly enthusiastic.
We exchanged several epic emails talking about my craft blog, my audience, my direction, my hopes for the site ... me me me. Ha! How could I *not* love it? She even sent me sheets of preliminary sketches from her brainstorming sessions.
Our conversations got the gears turning in my head. Eventually, I was inspired to
create my own logo, but I believe I couldn't have done this without first consulting with Perrin. I'd spent 5 years trying to come up with logo on my own, with no luck.
I wanted to pay her back for all her help. She'd said something about wanting a Starling Handbag of her own, so, in secret, I crocheted one for her. And I bought the fabric for the lining. And tucked it away in my WIP drawer ... for at least a year ... sigh ...
I could have just taken this out of the WIP drawer, frogged it, and put the yarn back in my stash since Perrin didn't know I'd even started it. It's no fun admitting your shortcomings ... but as my Midwestern up bringing taught me, doing so probably builds character, so I'm sucking it up. As bad as I feel about letting this token of my appreciation languish, I still want Perrin have a special Starling Handbag made just for her.
As you can imagine, being tucked in a drawer for a year, her Starling had a couple of folds and creases. I needed to lightly block it.
It just so happens that these cartons of chicken stock are the perfect shape and size to create a blocking form ... bonus that they are waterproof, too!
I inverted the Starling over the cartons and lightly sprayed it with a water squirter. There was a little smoothing and pulling involved to work out the wrinkles.
In this photo you can see the nice crisp edge around the bottom of my Starling thanks to the innovation of
Chicken Betty. She came up with the idea of crocheting in the interior-loops-only when you transition from the bottom of the bag to the sides. Brilliant!
After drying overnight, good as new!
This is the gorgeous fabric I bought for the lining. I love those flowers! I recently came across a great felt flower tutorial that I hope will work to make the outside embellishments for the bag. Oh! I'm looking forward to working on this handbag!