New market, new bags

I’ve started working on some scarves for the Geelong Scarf Festival but of course they have to stay under wraps for a while.  All I can say about them is ‘frog hair’ and ‘yarn chicken’ – the yarn is very fine and there wasn’t quite enough of it.  I had planned both projects carefully and there should have been enough yarn, maybe the warp was longer than I thought.  I had to adjust the borders according to the yarn available and had to move groups of 5 yarns across the warp so the borders will be equal.  It’s all working well and there should be a couple of scarves for stock as well as the ones for the Scarf Festival.

I wanted to make some bags for the re-launch of the market from the various scraps of hand woven fabric that just seem to appear around the place.  I finished the prototype a couple of weeks ago

and then went into production over the Easter break.  I thought that I would get them all finished and do some weaving as well but I got distracted by other things such as gardening, a wild goose chase after a tree that I knew was just right for my garden but which was out of stock, and sourcing the things I needed to finish the bags.

A few days out from the market there was just the one finished bag and lots of panels ready to make the rest of the bags.

I was curious to see just how much time was involved in making each bag and as I was making a batch of 10, the maths is really easy.  I averaged 33 minutes to make the panels for one bag, including cutting the fabric and interfacing and sewing on the borders.  It’s far more efficient to make 10 at a time as I can sit at the sewing machine upstairs and machine as much as I can before going downstairs where the cutting table and iron live to press what’s been done and move on to the next step.  It would of course be even more efficient to have everything on the same level but my house just isn’t arranged that way and going up the stairs is good exercise. 

Progress has been good, I’ve finished the first four

and may get a couple more done before tomorrow. 

They can be worn on the shoulder if you’re tall, cross body if you’re short and with a knot in the cord or some cord removed, on the shoulder if you’re short. 

There’s a full size zippered pocket

and I did remember to secure the bottom of it so that possessions can’t escape. There's a few beads to keep them closed if needed

It will be interesting to see if the customers like them

– or maybe it will be a tea towel kind of day.

There's lots to do before tomorrow when the Hawthorn Craft Market is re-launched as the Hawthorn Makers Market and returns to the Hawthorn Arts Centre which is where the market started in 1979 when the building was still used as the town hall

Helen