At an early point in lockdown, a passing superstar delivered patches for a new round of bags. They came with a hand folded envelope of marigold seeds! And it was quite a big pile. I decided to deal with it ten bags at a time. Sometimes I lose my mind and have dozens of part finished bags lying around for extended periods.
Then I started in on a friend’s mother’s stash. Her dear and lovely mother has now been gone for long enough that her stash can be passed on.
This also has allowed me to use up some of my offcut pile, pieces so small even I usually don’t use them for patchwork. Some is becoming interfacing for bag straps.
So there it is, the first ten. It might have been eleven at some stage….
A while back, my computer reached the stage in its life where I needed to go and make a cup of tea after I turned it on and before it started to be capable of doing anything other than finding its own fingers and toes. The new one is a lot smaller than the old, and needed a protective cover.
The plant dyed blanket stash came to mind yet again, and this is the rather plain and simple sleeve I made.
And a close up of my rather basic blanket stitching! I am loving the way all the plant dyed thread I’ve been gathering keeps getting put to use along with the fabric…
There came a point where I started to find I couldn’t figure out what fabric to use for boomerang bags anymore. I’ve cleared an entire selection of fabrics out of my stash. And that is when I started to turn toward the wool, and my thoughts returned to the box pouch.
I love this design. Those who have been reading for a while know that I can really get on a roll, and make the same thing over and over. This isn’t even the first time with the box pouch. They are a great size for some of my wool blanket stash, and they have also used a good number of the vintage and reclaimed zippers in my stash. And what fun to be able to use this fabric… dyed with purple carrots, passionfruit skins, eucalyptus …
But wait! There’s more (of course)…
Just quietly, that isn’t a complete catalogue… but it is a fair sampling…
The latest round of Boomerang Bags have been driven by thrifted bedlinen. There was one quilt cover that I acquired simply because it was pretty and had owls on it. But then there have been others bought as a set where what I really want is the sheet or one side of the quilt cover (which is a good green for Extinction Rebellion patches) and the remainder of the set is looking for a use. Oh my. Some of this bedlinen is just about new and already at the op shop. IKEA is the leading label and it makes me sad.
Then there are the places I use fabric that I can’t use any other way. This strap is being made sturdy and thick with a piece of cotton blanket I found on the path where I was walking. I took it home and washed it, and then decided it could be used here.
Then there are some clothes I can’t reuse as bag outers or linings, like this pair of pants. Bought at the op shop, they were one of the first pairs of half lined trousers I’ve had the luck to wear. Now I have decided they can’t keep going–I removed the buttons and salvaged lining and fabric. Some of this will go into straps too.
There have been pockets added into some bags from a pile of jeans pockets I bought for a song at the Adelaide Remakery sale–lovingly removed from jeans being upcycled into mats.
Oh, and there was this. A garden umbrella lying discarded and broken by the side of a road I pass most days. I often pick litter along here. This time I removed the canopy, took it home, washed it, and calculated which parts could be re-used.
These are the umbrella bags–I found two more yesterday…and the colour is wrong but never mind.
One of a kind–two from sample fabrics from the Remakery. One from a great print from an op shop. The large image, a dress from the op shop.
Acorn and iron dyeing experiments…
These are the bedding bags… The two linen bags bottom right are lined with IKEA sheets.
Doona covers with a complementary print on the reverse side and/or the sheet. I guess it’s a long time since I bought a doona cover. But the design opportunities are excellent.
And finally, a nostalgia print my friend could find no use for. 44 bags in all. Whew.
The most recent stack of Boomerang Bags were made over a considerable period. Here are some in progress–straps being interfaced with shaggy leftovers of flanellette sheet well past last use on a bed, and a shirt being turned into a bag lining.
I made linings out of all manner of bits and pieces. The Remakery had a sale and I went in and bought upholstery samples and scraps of cotton fabrics. Here are some of them being pieced together for linings.
And eventually, there were bags–spot the upholstery samples!
And more bags…
Still more bags…
And yet more.
And in due course, I handed them over and the amazing BB volunteer I see most often exchanged them for more labels!
The stash of fabrics that will never become clothing has dwindled very much in the Boomerang Bags period, my friends–this time, some metres of an open weave black fabric became many handles and a few bags. The little ?indigo? patch featured here appeared on the Guild trading table the other night with a little label about how it had been resist dyed with pegs. Cute as a button!
This fabric was a gift from a person I used to work with many, many years ago. It had years of use covering a small table and hanging on the wall, but had been tucked away for some years. Now it will be out in the world again in all its glory.
I had evidently patched together leftovers of my last Boomerang Bags episode, (and not only for linings–lots of these bags have jeans pockets from jeans that are no more, patched together with other scraps into linings). So there are some bags with a black front and a patchwork back, or vice versa.
And then–the motherlode of wide wale corduroy. This had a $2 tag on it from the Salvos. I think I had a long period of wistfully looking back to a specific pair of corduroy pants I had near the end of High School and beyond–I remember them as chocolate brown and with a paperbag waist. I felt like a sensation in them for some years. Eventually someone told me how bold she thought I was I was to wear them–or perhaps the green pair that replaced them in the early 1980s, with, ahem, secondhand suede winklepickers–on a first date with a mutual friend who was stylish and, well, judgmental. At first I was surprised and delighted, if puzzled, to be judged bold. Then I realised I was really being told that I had worn a very unflattering outfit to a first date, and with a style queen. Sigh. As it happens the outfit did not kill the date and we went on to have a relationship in which I received quite some instruction on how to dress!
Anyway–I am entirely unsure how I come to have so much wide wale corduroy in my possession, unless it was a wistful longing for my younger self feeling like a million dollars and able even to consider a corduroy paperbag waist as a style statement. But now it is all gone–all the maroon and two different shades of black of it. I do wish I hadn’t given away those suede winklepickers though!
I am still in love with this traditional Japanese style of bag. Having acquired Japanese fabric scraps in Japan, I made some more, combining recycled clothing (a red linen shirt from the op shop and a maroon sleeveless linen shirt worn very much by me since the 1990s became linings) with fabric I have dyed with indigo as well as all kinds of Japanese fabric scraps.
I find this design very cunning, and in Japan, I was struck by the different styles that casings tended to take, with drawstrings travelling through casings that were quite separate from the main bag. In the drawstring constructions I more often have encountered and created, the drawstring passes through a casing in the garment or bag itself.
And there it is again. I constantly find myself creating series, and I constantly find myself much more readily making scraps, remnants and recycled fabrics into projects rather than using untouched loveliness in my possession, as if it is too special and valuable to cut, even when it is a gift! I’ll have to work on that, because of course I want people to use the things I gift them!
Well, I’ve had some weeks of illness in which knitting seemed too much. I know, I know!! But I managed to slowly make more Boomerang bags some days. I finally cut up a pair of ramie jeans I must have kept for at least 15 years since they wore right out, in case I’d learn how to make another pair… or something. I can see why I loved these from the time I bought them second hand in, oh, the late 1980s or early 1990s– but I’ve finally let my longing to reproduce them go and taken the scissors to them.
They made some nice bags…
I found yet more bits and pieces to create linings from, including jeans pockets and other leftovers from the last round of bags.
This series of bags all came from a striking border print I had in stash. Origins lost in the mists of time, but I guarantee I never imagined myself in a square dancing circle skirt made of this!
Then there was this shirt I made many years ago and had years of happy times wearing. Now that fabulous print gets a new lease on life.
The last of one of Joyce’s fabrics, teamed with jeans that have passed the point of no return for a nice strong base.
Finally, I had quite a score of big prints on cotton canvas one day at the op shop. A black and white panel seemingly designed to hang on a wall and then these red and green prints.
And that is a wrap! But not a single use plastic wrap, haha….
It all began with a visit with friends, who took us for a trip through part of Tasmania, months ago. We went to a country market and right beside it was Wafu Works. What a place! Full of all kinds of Japanese paper, textiles and tools. I ended up with some thread an sashiko needles, and bought a kit to make a rice bag with some gift money… Indigo dyed fabrics on the outside, a red lining and a drawstring cord.
I was so intrigued. I learned a new stitch and a cunning construction. I loved the vintage fabrics. You know what happened next, right? I paired the leftover fabric with some of my own indigo dyeing, and cut up a mauve linen shirt I remember buying about 16 years ago for the lining, and pieced the scraps together…
In the end I made three, and I’m now itching to make more…
I decided to raid my stash of pockets. They have been cut out of garments I am turning into other things (like bags!) and here they are now, stitched to the inside of Boomerang Bags.
What bags? I hear you asking. These bags. Historical cotton, and upholstery fabric left for me by the charming BB volunteer organiser who collected my last lot of completed bags (she apparently does not understand the supply issue at my place is oversupply).
Oh, and I mean these bags too.
And these! I have now reached the end of the 1980s eye-bleeding fabrics from hard rubbish and moved back to whittling away the back catalogue of fabrics I have inherited, bought, thrifted, or upcycled from garments and manchester. Scraps are getting thinner in the cupboards. My love of tablecloths shows less. The ancient pairs of trousers and jeans ran out and I have acquired some jeans through the op shop so I have sturdy fabric for places I need it (handles, for example). In fact, I have started reorganising the supplies in the room I use to sew, and I’ve also decided to release some fabrics into the wild. Some were needed for a friend’s school project, and he liked some fake fur scraps so much they went home with him too. I took some more to the Guild last night because… I am reaching layers of my own stash that I cannot imagine ever using and there is no obvious reason I should keep them instead of taking them to places where other people might enjoy them! And… twelve or more fully lined Boomerang bags are under construction and moving gradually to the finish line right now.
Local & Bespoke 