Making Fun

posted: Monday, 09 November 2009

Had another great evening at The Make Lounge tonight.

I have taught and attended classes here before, so knew it would be good, but had not been back since some of the premises had been turned into a little shop.

It was a real treat to return and spend an evening having fun, chatting, drinking wine and making something with no pressure involved.

To top it all, the shop looked great- lots of tempting bits that I was very easily swayed by!

The class I'd booked was to make a fully-lined and padded fabric coin purse and I chose this as I really wanted to make one with some bead embroidery on it. But as the whole idea of turning my work into a finished piece is so out of my comfort zone, I wanted help with it.

I always think that the things I can easily do- beading and cross-stitch are easy as the holes are already there!

Move me into something without strict guidance i.e. free form fabric embroidery or assembling a purse and I'm lost.

But after the fun I had recently going outside my comfort zone, I thought I'd give it another go.

We began the night by choosing our two fabrics - one for the outside of the purse and one for the lining. This was not an easy task. There was a huge choice of gorgeous fabrics and we all spent ages narrowing down our choices.

In the end I chose a dark navy patterned one for the outside as I thought the motifs were nice and small and it was crying out for embellishment. Then I added in a fun numbers pattern which used the same green to line the purse.

We then set about over the next 3 hours cutting, sewing, lining and assembling.

It was all a lot easier than I'd imagined and it was the neatest bit of sewing I've ever done.

I really learnt just how much being accurate every step of the way pays off- a good lesson.

Before we finished, I managed to fit in a bit of shopping for more fabric and frames, so look out for those combinations appearing here in the future.

I'm back at the lounge again this week so will try and keep myself away from the shop this time!