A Handmade Mothers Day gift.

A few weeks ago I asked my Mum what she might like for Mothers Day.  She had no idea until this happened but afterwards decided a knitting bag would be useful.

 

She wanted me to make her one so feeling inspired by Nettnot's applique bunny bag I got to work and ordered a basic bag, purchased some trimming and raided my fabric stash.

My applique skills are not great and sewing around shapes is not a strong point either so I decided on a basic heart shape to adorn the front of the bag.

I started by making a template and cutting around it.

Then I cut some bondaweb and ironed the heart onto the front of the bag.  I love bondaweb!

Next I stitched around the edge of the heart in a zigzag stitch.  In hindsight I think I should have used smaller stitches a lot closer to the edge.  I may go back and add another row of stitches.

Next was the trimming, I started with the fancy ric-rac and stitched along the centre to secure it in place.  I learnt a valuable lesson here.  I stitched both ends on at the same time and then worked my way around.  The ric-rac was slightly too long for the bag so I ended up with a gathering as I was unable to adjust where the end of the ric-rac joined the start.

I decided that a green ribbon would look lovely along the centre of the ric-rac, so I started to work sewing this on using one of my special stitches.  Unfortunately my needle snapped halfway around.

After a quick change I was ready to continue and to finish the edging.

Overall I am pretty pleased with this for a first attempt at applique and decorative edging.  I am still new to sewing afterall.  I get to hand it over next week when I visit my parents for my birthday.  I do hope my Mum loves it as much as I do.