A pocket.

Last week I needed a project to throw myself into and a quick glance through Cloth Paper Scissors gave me just what I needed. I do love this magazine. It's American and I have glanced at it at shows before but last Christmas I was able to borrow some copies and sat reading them with my fingers itching to try out so much. It covers mixed media art but seems to have quite a feminine bias. To me this it nicely sits across art and craft. The projects are about creating mixed media art but to me they are about crafting and no other magazine really seems to revel in that joy of making something. Just gathering together a bunch of things and making another thing. This is very much how I work and I subscribed to it when the dollar was cheap but now, can you hear the anxiety in my voice, the subsrciption is about to run out and it is now quite expensive. I don't have many magazines and I will really miss this one. For me it is the type of magazine to keep and go through on a regular basis. I have a couple of friends for whom it does nothing but fro me its just fab.

Anyway so the project was to make a purse full of pockets for treasures. The kids often pick up stones, feathers, shells etc to show me. I love it when they do so I decided to make a pocket to keep them in. They are usually little things that get lost easily. I normally work with a few sketches but quite spontaneously. I didn't do any real planning to this I just grabbed things and threw them together, and believe me I threw a lot at it! It was a nice project with a good mixture of machine and hand sewing which is what I like. Very short attention span! I was easy to fit around the week. So here goes.

The first this to say is that I don't seem to have a photo of the front! In fact they may seem rather random photos but bear with me. I made the pocket by doing a random machine patchwork where I laid small scraps of fabric on a piece of felt and then "scribbled" all over with the machine. Zig zag all the edges of the pocket. I lined it later on. I wrote of scraps of curtain lining and the zig zagged that onto the pocket. then I doodled with hand embroidery. the inside cover says "pretty things" and has bead around the label. The beads look good but maybe need to be smaller. The embroidery is random crosses and a piece of ric rac applied. is a but scruffy and needs to be a bit more coherent. On the pocket cover I machined doodled some flowers and so I added beads and embroider some petal details which I really like. This pocket has some beads that I have found while out and about.
This is the first pocket which is open. On the front it has "see a penny pick it up" . Th felt has become quite stretched as t has been sewn so the pocket gapes slightly but I like this.This photo is a little dark On the left hand side I have hand embroidered a few branches of a tree with some lovely red bead as apples. i love this page. it felt lovely to work the tree through the felt and patchwork. I am putting those red beads on everything at the moment as they look so lovely. The right hand side ha a mostly green background with some machine embroidered spirals I have added red beads to each spiral and a shisha mirror . I like this page a lot.
This is
The next pockets are facing each other On the left hand side it says "see a penny, pick it up" and on the inside it says "the all day you will have good luck" I attached the label with chain stitched and added a train button I found somewhere. the inside has machine embroidered zig zags with hand embroidered flowers. i really like that technique of adding to the machine embroidery. I think ts the adding of the layers. On the right hand side the top says "Treasure" with blue beads around. Again those beads rally make something of the label. i think I should have printed the labels with my stamping set. Only problem with that is that I have broken the "e"!These 2 pages are the backs of pockets. On the left hand side it says "memories" and then a piece purple braid with some buttons on This page had a lot of colours on it and the braid is a strong colours so it has killed off some of the colour. i like this. The right hand side had quite a bit of machine doodling on which I decide looked like pineapples so I added some beads and leaves. I looks really nice.

The last 2 pockets have the rhyme of kitty Fisher. I think I would like to do another pocket based just n this rhyme. The font of the right hand side pocket has machine embroidered spikes with hand embroidered flowers and bead on. The left hand side is the inside of the back cover and complete the rhyme. I have added a shisha mirror and some buttonsThis is the inside of the pocket and has a ribbon on and I have sewn sequins and bead on top of each other and made flowers. Its added a nice bit of sparkle to it.

This is the back cover with a bit of embroidered tree with bead as berries and a ribbon with sequin and bead flowers.
I am really pleased with the whole thing but next time I will take more tie over the planning so that I am less tempted to throw everything at it. I love clean plain designs in the modern way but when I come to make something it gets all the glitz and glamour I have. I guess its more my syle!

If you read this far then thank you and well done Its a bt of a long post! It helped me to eveluate the piec. Now I just need some of those treasure but at the moment the only thing the kids keep giving me is snowballs!