Thank you for all your lovely birthday wishes for Sweetpea, I will give her a kiss from each of you (any excuse to smother her with kisses :-)).
Little Sweetpea was very lucky to get such a lot of wonderful presents, she was also overjoyed (and so was I) that she also received some gorgeous hand-made presents. I made her a little nature satchel bag for her to put all the wet leaves, conkers and pine cones she finds in :-)
Here she is modelling her bag, I think she is in love with the little ladybird. I was going to put a bumble bee on it, as if it was flying away from the flower, but Little Sweetpea had other ideas :-)
She has already been using it on our walks and many treasures have been put into it. Would you like a closer look ........
Here is her little pet ladybird scurrying off ... oohh and one of those cute little labels that I used on my sisters heart.
I appliqued a flower onto the bag flap ....
My friend told me not to just stick with a running stitch when making things so I tried out another stitch for the strap, really happy I did ....
I lined the bag to protect the linen from all those soggy leaves .....
I embroidered her name along the front .....
And here is a full frontal shot :-) I was really happy with how this turned out especially as it is my first bag. I made some funny mistakes on the way like thinking I could sew the strap on the reverse and then turn it inside out - hhhmmm never going to happen. You have to turn everything inside out to sew it together and then pull it all through, I sewed along the top of the bag but then had a flap of lining, flap of outside fabric and the lid flap lol :-) You learn from experience !
The bag is made of 100% linen and lined with oil-cloth. With linen being £25 a meter I decided to buy a large pair of linen trousers from a charity shop and recycled them, the oilcloth is from a tablecloth that was too big for the table - I do love a bit of up-cycling :-)
Little Sweetpea also got a lovely hand-made necklace which was created by my wonderful friend Lorraine. Here it is modelled by my one eyed childhood Bunny.
Ohhh I do love this , so many lovely glass beads, Little Sweetpea is having to keep a close eye on this one so that I don't wear it :-)
She also made the cutest little bracelet which is the perfect size for Little Sweetpeas tiny wrists. Love love love those polymer clay beads.
And look what we have here, a gorgeous little ladybird brooch just for Sweetpea, this will be popped on her coat or bag. This was made by my fab mate Helen from Bears Footprints.
Oohhh how I love having creative friends. It is so nice that we are all inspiring each other to create such lovely things and it is even better that we are giving the kiddies hand-made gifts - there is something so heart warming about it :-) xxx
