June makes

Just 7 for this month - as seen below.

From the top left we have...

1. Cloth from the indigo dyeing workshop - mine is the snowball one at the bottom of the photo. 
2. Mother of all patchwork quilt tops. I still don't know what to do with it. 
3. Colourful hexagon bag with wooden handles. I've used this quite a bit already. 
4. 'Sew beautiful' bags, one for me and one as a gift which has already travelled half way round the world and back. 
5. Red convertible clutch/shoulder bag which I made as a sample for a workshop, which then got cancelled due to lack of interest. Boo. 
6. Camera pouch

I find I never blogged about the last of these so here it is in more detail. 

That zip was a real bugger to install. This was my first experience of clamshell patchwork and I do rather like it. I am working on some applecore stuff at the moment and that is fun too. However, those curves take a lot more time to make pieces for and to sew together than my beloved hexagons so I'm not fully converted. 

My WIP list is fairly busy:

1. Quilt for Nickerjac - fabric bought and design decided. Just pre-washing it all at the moment before starting to cut. 
2. Two more 'sew beautiful' bags being made as presents. More about that below. 
3. Applecore patchwork part done for a manicure bag I'm making myself. 
4. Mum's EPP quilt which I've not worked on all month. 
5. Jasmine's winter cardigan - all knitted bar half a sleeve and a bow. 

The 'sew beautiful' bags are presents whose recipients do not read this so I can show the two outsides I have made. My youngest sister has a hippo fixation. She's got a PhD in biomedical fnah, is a logistics guru and a strong, independant woman, but she does love her hippos. I am sure a few months ago Tokyo was stuffed to the gills with hippo fabrics but recently I could only find two, of which I went with this. 

It is a double gauze (I think that's the right name) so a bit flimsy on its own. I therefore added batting and a backing and treated it like a mini quilt - basting and adding sashiko-like hand quilting stitches. The second is for my SIL's birthday and she said her favourite colours were red, purple, green and black. I went stash diving. 

I used the same stitching over the top but using a variegated red - I do love my variegated threads - and a thinner batting. I'll be making both of these up into proper bags very soon.