Bag project completed

My project to make some new casual shopping bags is completed with these three bags. The blue from some charity shop curtains and a duvet; the green and white from an old skirt of mine lined with an old summer shirt of my husbands. And the pink revamped from a shoulder bag that somehow acquired a stain. It was made smaller and then lined with some left over thin pink fabric from my stash.  I shall try these out.  No cost so if they only last a while it will not matter. Oldest son says there is a stack of reuse bags at their house I can have.

Having gone through my "rag and reuse" boxes several times now it is time for a clear out. I have been inspired by this library book.

I have started with plaiting technique!  This was so therapeutic!!! cutting things up which were too thin, wrong colour, wrong material into strips and sometimes machining the strips cut to get the same long lengths. Then old fashioned plaiting. I tied one end to the back of one my spindle chairs and used a big bull dog clip to hold the plaiting whenever I wanted to stop and sort out the tail ends. Used up odds and ends of cotton in the work basket to just stitch the ends together.

I am going to make several lengths and colour ranges and then think of a design.  The book has some very modern takes on how to use these!  I remember my mother and aunts having rag rugs but the over powering colour in the 1950s was brown!  I have not done the thing they used to do with the hook and canvas for years and years - I am tempted!

Once the stash is down a bit I shall not feel quite so bad on adding to the recycle clothes.  We are rapidly working our way through winter clothes we have had for 4/5 years and the ex office stuff. This year we may celebrate a change in our wardrobes based on what we do now - not our past!!