Hasn’t the lovely spring weather brought dreams of summer!
The beach cafes here have been full to bursting it feels as if we have finally shaken of winter,
just in time for beach huts, divers and little boats!
I stitched this diver using free motion machine embroidery a while ago, not really sure what I was going to do with it, I had these lovely fabrics in my stash, the stripes remind me of a swimming pool, and the little boats would ‘float’ above the pockets. I think the colours were in harmony with the diver.
The idea of the bucket bag came because I remember sitting poolside in Italy and getting frustrated because I had to keep on hunting through everything to find my book, or my suncream etc.
I thought it would be so useful to have a bucket bag – where clothes etc could be stashed away
but with pockets to hold all the things you reach for now and then to hand.
I spotted this lovely ricrac it made me realise it would be perfect waves!
You can see some of the shading on the diver it was terrific fun to do.
The ‘wavy’ ricrac was a way to finish the pockets, by stitching them like this they would ‘float’ on the edge
You can see how the ricrac floats along the edge, I added another row of waves.
The diver was trimmed in preparation to being stitched to the ‘sea’ pockets.
I positioned the pocket in such a way that the boats and beach huts appeared to be floating on the sea while the lady dives deep into the water.
I like the way the waves float over one another – I used a fabric marker to set out the pocket seams
I also had this light blue cord, which was perfect for the drawstring top. A zigzag backstitch secured the ends.
I zigzagged both ends of the cord so that it would be on the inside edge of the bag.
Like all drawstring bags, I created a roomy 2 inch overlap for the string to run easily.
I left a little opening for the string to go through to allow for gathering.
draw the rectangle together and stitch along the shorter edge.
Then stitch the circle bottom edge to the rectangle.
enjoy!
Pins needles and Fred 