OK, this post is so totally not what you're thinking, because, I totally know what you're thinking. Stop thinking that. Really. Just stop. ;)
What I'm talking about is an amazing quote from Brian Eno that can be heard on the Daniel Lanois album
Here Is What Is.
I've been wanting to add a closure of some sort to my flower bag because when I set it down, it opens up wide.
This weekend I took my Flower Purse out and about. Sunday we went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Philadelphia's beautiful Fairmont Park. Very few of the cherry trees had actually bloomed, but it was a beautiful day to be out in the park regardless.
I've been sorta avoiding this post ... because I just don't know what to say. Well I guess there's one thing to say ...
I'm done!
Today I curled up on the couch in the sun and embroidered a label for the purse. I used vintage hem facing from Michelle of
Green Kitchen fame.
This afternoon I curled up on the couch with the sun coming through the blinds and spent a little time weaving in the ends of the pleat stitching.
The part that had me worried in regard to the purse lining were the pleats. As I showed you in my
test pleat post, putting all the slack in one big pleat really constricts the opening. Using what I learned from the test pleats, I decided to do four sets of sort-of-evenly-spaced pleats.
I've been avoiding the lining because I didn't feel like I was ready to tackle it. Yesterday I decided to just jump in and I got so much done that I'm going to have to split it up into several posts this week. I'm getting close to finishing it, but there's still much to do.
I've been playing around with the lining. The fabric I'm going to be using is patterned, so I'm going to need a cream outer layer and the patterned inner layer. I don't want the patterns showing through in between the flowers. For messing around, I've made a test lining from a crappy old sheet that I keep around just for this purpose.
I was *this close* to "finishing up the folding over and sewing of the handles" and something started bothering me. The cord was making the right and left edge bow out more than I liked. See it on the left? I didn't want my purse to gape open like that. I want it to lay closed more flatly, like on the right.
OK, I'm to the part in this project where I normally set it aside and never finish it. Not because I don't want to, or I'm bored of it, but because the tasks ahead require thoughtfulness and chunks of time for execution. The crochet part is easy because I can fit that in 3 minutes at a time. But finishing the handles and sewing the lining is a whole other story.
There has been no progress on the flower purse since the last update, but a discussion of seamless single crochet is in order.
I probably should have just tacked this onto yesterdays post ... which is why I'm calling it update 9.5. I was just being a little lazy. ;)
The first part of the handles that are crocheted are the bit across the long sides of the purse rectangle. Those 9 flowers' petals get gathered as you single crochet through multiple petals at a time.
I am done weaving in ends! Thank goodness that they can look like crap on the inside (because the bag will be lined) because that took a lot of the pressure off.
Still just weaving in the bazillion ends. I've been resisting the urge to calculate how many ends there are. I think it's best that I don't know. Ever.
We've got handles! We don't, however, have sunlight, so the picture is kinda crap.
OK, even though this post is late (meaning, not on Saturday) the pictures were actually taken on Saturday. So, look at the photo ... yes, you see that right ... I'm all done with the flowers and connectors! Yay!!!!
This week didn't offer much craft time, but I did manage to fix my
little misalignment. I also finished up all the flower motifs.
As I was spreading out the flowers to take this picture, I noticed that they weren't lining up correctly at the bottom right ... and then I noticed the bottom left ... oh, no ...
No mere case of
gigantism is going to dissuade me from making worlds most adorable purse.
I've started the flower purse from
this book. I'm using the smallest hook I dare with the worsted weight cotton, and it appears that the purse is going to be GIANT sized. Since there's no people in the pictures in the book, I just made up in my head that the purse was smallish. FAIL.