Since I shared the stack of vinyl pouches with you, pouches seem to have overtaken my life, which is a little dramatic I know. But I seriously have a bad case of Pouch Love!
This isn’t new to me, I’ve known I’ve had it for a long time - but what is new is that now I’m creating my own, and my answer really is ‘oh I need a pouch for that’ whatever the question. I’ve a few ready to share with you so will start to do that over the next few weeks, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This one though is both practical - it’s already in use - and had made use of two of the Adult Learning courses I did last year. This combines a print from the Indian Block Printing & Stitch course, along with the skills I picked up in the Bag Making course - most notably zips.
Though for all of the pouches I’ve made so far, I’ve still not switched to a zipper foot, so I think I probably should add that to my ‘to conquer’ list for this year, but back to this pouch.
It started off as a neon pink printed mandala on the cut up frill of an old valance sheet. Seriously.
Quite humble beginnings. At this point not even the edges had been finished on my overlocker - I guess I was keen to carry on printing during the class, and had underestimated just how many squares I’d need so printed and cut as I went!
As for many of the prints that I did in the class I had no real plans for what I’d do with the outputs, I was just enjoying the creative process and exploring the patterns and colours available. After the class finished I made more of a plan as to how I would embellish the prints, or at least chose a colour scheme.
The colour scheme chose me
This was was always going to have an element of teal, and I don’t know why. It’s not a colour I usually go for, though I have since bought clothes that are a similar colour, and I think it goes well with the pink. I was also keen for some of the printing to remain on show, and not to cover it all with embroidery, other than that I had no real plans when I started out.
After embellishing some of the printed area I knew I wanted more teal, and so it seemed natural to enclose it with a circle. And I thought I might turn it into an eye, but as I continued to embroider I decided against that. I didn’t do the outer circles - or at least two of them - freehand, I used a glass vase and then a plate to draw around to stop it all going skewif.
Nor did I use an embroidery hoop, and on reflection I probably should have for this one, as I ended up with more material than necessary in the centre. Thankfully though I came up with a plan for dealing with that - to use wadding to fill the hole, and so creating an almost raised central area. This in turn reminded me of the poppers I’d used on the first pouches I’d made, which the all important tools for were functionally, but not prettily stored in the metallic plastic bag it arrived in.
Now I really had a plan
With that I realised the answer was ‘I needed a pouch for that’ and what better than one with a big circle on the front. It was meant to be! But did I have any material that would match my teal scheme, probably - and as it turns out I did.
I’d bought the Liberty silk remnant during lockdown, along with some other prints which I’d used for some fancy masks, but I hadn’t used this one at all. Now was its time - I even found a complementary zip from the large stash I bought from eBay. The lining is the pale pink t-shirt remnant which I’d saved from a recently retired camisole top. Perfect.
I used the same approach as for the vinyl fronted pouches, but obviously without the vinyl part - and a whole lot bigger. Having made that stack of pouches really helped me out, as knowing how they were assembled meant I could made the adaptations I needed.
And it turned our really well.
Not only does it hold the tools for attaching the poppers - and the spare bits that came with it, it also holds the plastic container full of poppers.
So now when I want to add a popper I just need to go to my mandala pouch for my poppers - which may not always be easy to say, but it sure is easy to find!
