Tag Archives: bags

December 6, 2016 · 9:48 am

Blue silk bags

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Could I stop at … ahem… was it twelve? I lost count of the bags I had already made…and no, as usual, I couldn’t stop.  I had one more piece of silk that started out a pale blue and ended up more like this.

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There were a few pieces of cream or bronze fabric left and they were pieced in.

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The first has already gone to a lovely friend I was lucky enough to visit with when I went to Brisbane, and the second to a house warming.  And I love the buds, especially!  Well.  I am ready for any number of occasions for gifts now!  In the meantime I am still trying to work out how to wind back the Christmas gifting obligations in my family.  How to honour the ideas of generosity and reciprocity and love that perhaps moved this tradition to come into existence, but to detach from its wasteful and consumerist present.  Maybe I have to begun by asking that I not be given gifts.  Or perhaps talking about how my daughter has clearly decided that from now on she will only buy me second hand gifts.  She reached this decision without discussing it with me specifically–and it has really made me feel that she sees me!  Well.  One step at a time.

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November 26, 2016 · 1:12 pm

Drawstring silk bags

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Some time ago I dyed some silk I found at the Guild trading table. Just recently though, I stopped looking at it, draped around the place, and realised what it could become. I am hoping these little bags will be pleasing gifts, and in some cases, replace wrapping paper in the coming season of compulsory gifting, which I prefer to involve as little waste as possible, as I have not managed to convert my family to thinking perhaps this is not the best possible way to show our affection for one another. I love giving people gifts, but I find the compulsory nature of it and the set date, just leads to waste, and giving and getting things that are not always wanted or needed.

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You knew where this was going, didn’t you?  I couldn’t possibly stop at one or two.

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I think it is partly the satisfaction of figuring something out and routinising it.  Practising it.  Being able to create a little system.  This wouldn’t satisfy every mind, but evidently there is something in it for me.

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I think it is also as simple as getting on a roll and being able to make maximum use of a piece of fabric. Again, not something that has an inherent logic that would work for everyone. And clearly the attitude of a person who has an outward bound stash rather than just one precious piece of fabric. I enjoyed piecing together some of the fabric so I could use it all, as you can see.

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I also made one from one of the fronts of a linen shirt dyed some time ago. The bronze-coloured fabric became two larger bags with double draw strings. And so here I am, hours of pleasurable bag making behind me and happy times of gifting ahead!  I hope your plans for the gifting season are going well…

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October 9, 2016 · 10:33 am

Uh oh… bags…

For those who have followed this blog for a while, this story will sound familiar.  Those who have started reading more recently (welcome!) may find my capacity to start with one bag and then somehow end up with dozens quite a few, a little puzzling,  Never mind.  I feel puzzled myself.  But this is how it unfolded this time.

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It always starts like this: I think I’ll make one bag.  Often it just seems like a piece of fabric is calling out to become a bag.  In this case, some plant dyed calico (Eucalyptus Cladocalyx bark vat with Eucalyptus Scoparia prints and some clamping…).  Then I think I’ll make another one.

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I believe I bought this hand printed fabric at a garage sale run by an artist.  To me, this design seems to have a vine and some Indigenous fish traps on it.

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Somehow once I have made one, it seems logical to make another.

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And another…

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Until I’ve used the whole piece of fabric and used most of a pair of jeans so worn out and tired they can no longer be mended and cannot be made into anything else, to interface bag openings and handles.

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In the end I took the bags to the Seed Freedom festival along with bunches of parsley and other goodness from the garden and left them at the festival food swap (I picked up some grapefruit).  Here’s a seed mandala in progress at the festival…

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But… the bags did not end there! A curtain was transformed into four more bags (one got given away before I took a picture)… and now I had better sit on my hands for a while.

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January 1, 2015 · 4:40 pm

Solstice bag extravaganza

As alert readers may have noticed, from time to time I get onto a theme and just keep going.  Bags are one such recurring theme, and in the quiet time on this blog a lot of bags got made. You have only seen the first few.  It went on to become what I whimsically refer to as ‘a bag jag’.  I am susceptible.

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I started on scraps that were on the floor and scaled up to long saved remnants and fabrics bought as offcuts, garments saved for re-use… and from there just kept going.

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Why not use some of the bark cloth curtains?  What am I saving them for?  What about those bits purchased at the  op shop?  That rolled up set of print scraps I picked up at a garage sale one time?  Why not interface the openings with the scrap canvas I collected  when I used to dumpster dive that canvas place on the way home from work?  You get the picture.  Before long there was this.

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Then I made more and some went to be Hannukah and Solstice and Christmas gifts so quickly they were not even photographed.  In the end I decided to go for it and just kept making with a view to taking them to my friends’ solstice party/picnic/clothes swap/pinata in the park.  It was a fun thing to do, and a fabulous evening as always, it made me smile to see some folks’ surprise that someone had made them just to give away, and I now have none of these bags left, and a marginally smaller stash of fabrics!

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