Dee at the Carlton: A little bit of Frida ...

I am rather partial to the colourful Frida Kahlo prints that are about now. I have several Frida cushions in the conservatory & a friend gifted a gorgeous length of fabric that covers my sewing drawers there.

This past week, a friend made a beautiful Frida fabric bag as a gift when we visited. She is so talented with her sewing.

She parted with the small, random leftover pieces, protesting 'they are just little bits'

I decided to make a similar bag to the gifted one & drew inspiration from a little treasure pouch I made some time back.

I assembled the pieces on a length of pink backing fabric - the Frida face piece was the longest so I used the other pieces to continue a pattern creatively as a length of fabric.

It was surprisingly easy to find common bits, even if some were diagonally or upside down to do it.

I pinned it all then used a matching blue thread to add free motion embroidery to join it all as a new fabric.

I joined it in to a circle & did the same with a backing fabric in pink. The two were quite floppy so I cut a length of batting & sandwiched that between the two layers.

I made a circular base by putting the top circles down & drawing around a small plate that was the right base size. I again sandwiched batting in the base, stitch it, turned it right way out.

I made a simple fabric channel to put a drawstring in, then assembled the top inside out with the inside fabric, the batting the channel & the outside pattern & stitched them along the top.

Turned right side out (the bottom was not sewn at this point) then I hand stitched the circular base to the finished top piece, before adding a line of machine stitching.

A length of silk was threaded for the drawstring, Frida's eyes had green embroidery, an earring sewn on & it is done.