Appliqué Bags

Evening Everyone!! Just popping in to Dotty land to show you what I have been working on (amongst other things). I am quite excited about it if I'm honest and the ladies at work have been very nice as I take my projects in with me to show them off.

Do you remember all that English paper piecing I was doing the other week? I came up with a cunning plan of what to do with all of the shapes! Stitch them onto the front of calico bags!! These bags are so boring looking but oh so useful, especially now we have to pay for carrier bags (I still get caught out with that one). Just shove them in the bottom of your handbag and they squish down under all the other bricks us ladies carry around but can be pulled out when needed.

To attached the shapes to the bags once I've pressed them and removed all of the paper pieces, I cut out a piece of Bondaweb (Wonderweb) which is just slightly smaller than the shape and iron it on, then remove the backing paper and iron the shape to the bag (making sure there is something between the layers of the bag so nothing gets accidentally glued). This makes it much easier to go round with tiny little whip stitches to hold the shape permanently in place.

I've also been playing with adding rows of running stitch, or kantha stitch if you build up the layers which I think looks really lovely and adds something extra. I'm so chuffed with these little bags, and it means I can continue to create my random pieced shapes now I know what I can do with them afterwards!!

Although I don't know what I would do with hundreds of these bags so I might pop a few into my Etsy shop if anyone would be interested?