Today I want to share with a you what could be a quick sewing project, although I have to admit that it has taken me at least 10 years in the making.
You may be asking whether I’m generally someone who starts a project with a great deal of enthusiasm and then doesn’t quite get round to finishing it? Well, you may have a point. I often like the creative problem solving part of a project, then once the problem is solved, the item loses a bit of its appeal may not quite get finished.
The project is a simple envelope style clutch type bag that I started making from some lovely vintage embroidered linen placemats that I had picked up from a house clearance place I used to frequent in Blackpool. The place was incredibly inexpensive and I seemed to be under the impression that it was my sole responsibility to rescue all the vintage textiles. This may not be the last fabric, yarn or trimming you may see from this source, and it’s certainly not the first here on the blog. Anyone who’s been here a while will know that I love re-purposing and using resources that already exist in the world rather than constantly driving the demand for more and new and putting pressure on our precious resources.
I also appreciate the wide range of tools and other notions from this source that I regularly use. I like exploring their origin story and their past and continuing the line of makers through whose hands they have passed.
I loved these placements but only found 3. I thought them so lovely that perhaps they should become something more interesting than a placemat. They were in immaculate, I think unused condition, so had none of the marks and stains that linen placemats can pick up with use.
In terms of problem solving, the main issue with turning these placemats into clutch bags or envelop pouches was that the wide, quite open weave of the linen fabric made it a little unstable and unable to hold it’s shape so easily. So clearly it needed stiffening in some way.
What was also quite clearly important to me then, and for which I am grateful to my earlier self, is that I wanted to retain the original edgings. Not only is this a lovely design element, it also most certainly made the finishing easier.
To address the fabric stability issue I had taken some heavy canvas fabric and cut it a little smaller than the placemat, then with some turquoise acetate lining fabric cut a piece a little bigger and ironed down with the edge overlapping so that the canvas was covered on one side. Then I appear to have cut another piece of the lining fabric, slightly smaller, ironed down its edges,and put this on the underside of the canvas. This means the canvas is covered on both sides, the inside which backs onto the placemat, and on the outside which would in effect be the lining of the bag. I assume that I was so thorough because the embroidery on the placemat has little holes in the centre of the motif and I didn’t want the stiffening canvas visible through these holes.
Then with the stiffening fabric thus sandwiched between acetate lining fabric, and a velvet ribbon button loop was in position, I sewed the lined stiffening panel onto the reverse of the placemat with the stitching inset from the embroidered edges. Ta da! All that was left was to sew up the edges and sew on a button. As you can see I’d heavily pressed the folds of the bags ready to do so….
One of the reasons I’m able to date this project as at least 10 years languishing, is that I used to make things like this to raise funds for our knitting group at the Women’s Centre in Blackpool. At that time artist Dotty Delightful used to run craft fairs at the Winter Gardens and we used to have a stall to sell our makes and raise funds for group trips. So the reason for these remaining unfinished? They probably weren’t completed in time for a fair and were then set aside.
Anyway, be that as it may, having pulled together a pile of mending and unfinished craft projects earlier in the year, and with a bit of an itch to sew recently, after all this time, I think it took me about an hour to sew up the two sides on the first of the clutches.
I simply used a vintage heavy coat button thread – Dewhurst’s 24, also likely from the same place as the placemats, and lined up the holes along the base of the black embroidered edge and sewed through those holes front and back to join.
I love that this thread was spun at Dewhurst’s in Skipton, not far from where we used to live and with which anyone who’s been to Yarndale will be familiar
Finally I added a vintage button, choosing black for a classic look and to pick up the black embroidered edge. I tried a cream button first and didn’t quite like the look or the position. Moving the button a little higher enabled me to close the bag securely but also put something a little more substantial in it. I’m thinking these make rather nice book covers, but even with this little design amendment, they still wouldn’t be suitable to a doorstopper of a book.
So having finished the first and it having taken so little time, do you think I powered on a finished the other 2? Well not quite, but yes, having done the first, I did finish the other two within the week, otherwise they too may have been waiting another 10 years …
Do you have languishing projects that just need a little snippet of time to complete, but that you never seem to get to? If so what do you think is the stumbling block?
Take care and happy crafting, and reading!
Speak soon,
Tess xxx