Christmas shopping

For those of you who like shopping this won't seem much of a project, for me who hates the supermarket it was quite a challenge.

With an afternoon meeting scheduled at my agency necessitating a trip to the big city I thought I would try to combine it with my Christmas shopping and do it all in one go.

I hate shopping, well and truly hate it, and with only a small expensive supermarket on my doorstep I try to get all the family essentials (well they insist they are essentials and threaten me if I don't buy them), like squash, biscuits, jelly sweets, beer and wine at places like Lidl or Aldi to economise a bit.

Next week we have three Christmas dinners planned so the trick today was to keep three menu plans in mind and stick to the shopping list, as well as being on the look out for items suitable for various dietry requirements.

Now hopefully that should mean no more shopping, except for the cheese I forgot, oh and the ham, oh and some bread, and some more wine because quite frankly you can never have enough.

The only challenge remaining - stop Thea and Brendan eating everything before next week!

Bag lady chic.....

OK it's a fair cop - I do have more in my wardrobe than the same 10 pieces that I am alternating with on a daily basis.

Yet I feel that all I do is stitch up hems and darn yet more holes.

I know that the answer does not lie in a shopping mall yet somehow I think that my self inflicted new clothes ban is to blame for this vague itch of disgruntlement.  But how have I arrived at a situation in my life when I think that the answer to a general rumble of dissatisfaction lies in the purchase of some new clothes.  I know consumerism is the panacea for the 20th century but for some reason I thought I was inured from it.

Just last week Brendan, courtesy of my mother's recent forays into the charity shops and car boot sales in her town left me with two shirts and a pair of trousers that are like new, so why am I hankering for poorly lit, dreadfully musak-ed stores full of lollipop headed sales assistants (that always make me feel so self conscious when shuffling through the racks looking for something in a size larger then Belsen).  I don't even like the majority of the clothes, nor am I keen on the conditions in which they were created but so suckered in am I that I am yearning for a plastic tagged label to remove.

This morning found me yet again setting aside a pair of denim 3/4 length trousers to repair for the umpteenth time, alongside a particulary unflattering example of pyjama nightmare where the hem is steadily unravelling in a slow attempt by the article in question to hide its shame and seek relegation to the rag bin, but no, off I go to sew it back together again.  But why?  It is so hideous I daren't photograph it for fear of cracking the lens yet I know it will find its way back into the top of my wardrobe and I will be sleeping in it again before the week is out.  And its not like I don't have any other night wear.

Why am I so incapable of throwing away these poor excuses for clothing in favour of the other items lurking in the depths of the wardrobe?  Do I really feel that the face that I want to show the world has much in common with a bag lady?

For some reason I have managed to squirrel away all my nice clothes on hangers and have let the dross rise to the surface time and time again to the point where I am intimately acquainted with about one tenth of my wardrobe and the rest is a mystery.  Trinny and Susannah where are you when I need you most?

I am going to gird my nettle and strengthen my loins and I vow to take a day next week and empty the contents of my wardrobe and swap everything at the back for everything at the front, rag everything that has been patched up at least  5 times, everything that is stained, everything that is stretched beyond recognition and everything that looks as though it has been used for mouse bedding.

In the meantime, I'll just go and sew another patch on my grotty grey t-shirt that I use for gardening, and ignore the fact that my black tracksuit trousers that I normally wear for work are now fetchingly spattered with some of the lovely purple paint from the bedroom wall.  

Bag lady chic anyone?

Back in the Studio - recycled material bags - with tutorial

When I went rifling through my lovely box of swapped clothes I found a set of tweed skirts which sparked an idea in my mind, and with studio withdrawl pangs this morning I decided it was definitely time to sit back down at my sewing table and do something to stop my palms from itching.

So I started making my series of tweedy English country garden shopping bags - the first one rolled off the production line today and was made from the lovely brown and beige striped tweed skirt you see in the photo above.  I spend the morning unpicking seams, hems and darts, then a quick iron flat.

My pattern was based roughly on a bag I had last year but with thicker straps intended for popping to the shops rather than slinging over your shoulder with your lippy and a mobile for a night out.

I just cut the rough shape with a fold line for the material out of some of the flimsy publicity material we get through the door, which is almost as light as tracing paper but has the advantage of telling you what is on offer at the supermarket.

Then using the paper template I cut two pattern pieces in the outer tweed material, using the pattern fold, and a further two pieces from the inner skirt lining to serve as the liner for the bag.  

Obviously because I am using odds and ends of material there was not enough lining to cut the bag liner in two simple pieces, I cut one, then  had to make up the second in two pieces and join them together with a seam.  So while I was cutting and sewing extra bits, I cut and sewed up a quick pocket too.  This then got attached to the lining at this early stage.

The bag lining was then pin basted right side to right side, and I sewed around the bag part leaving the opening and the handles to sew together later.

The outer tweed was then pin basted right side to right side and sewn together - as you may be able to see in the earlier photo I left a larger seam allowance for the tweed so that I could overlock it to prevent it from fraying.

With the two sets sewn up, I then put the inner lining into the outer tweed bag, making sure that they were right side to right side again.

I pin basted and sewed around the handles and the opening - remembering to sew these together in pairs, outer tweed to lining, leaving the handles open at the ends.

Then the hard part - pulling the bag inside out or right side out rather, you have to be quite tough to feed the whole bag through the small gap left at the seams of the handles, but with a bit of wiggling and pushing, the bag pops through.

I pressed the seams flat, then fed one handle into the open seam of another, and ran a double line of stitches across to secure them.

And there you have it - first one of my shopping bags completed in a day - which sounds like a long time but I was out at work from 11 to 4, so it was more of a morning fix in the studio and then back home and straight to my sewing machine before dinner.

There are three or four skirts altogther and some Prince of Wales check trousers to sew up so I had better get busy.

So very very very happy to be back in my studio - after a week of solid gardening I have missed it - or maybe my back just really needed a break from the hoe?