Owl appliqué bag

The day started early as I decided to cut out the pattern for my new bag. I'd already sketched it out during the week (I don't have the energy for much else after work) so I needed to draw out the individual pieces for the owl. By the time I had to leave to support the plant and cake sale at school I'd drawn out the individual pieces for the owl and the beach hut. By 9am I was at school and helping to price up cakes - there were so many lovely donations. As well as the plants and cake stalls, one of the mums had set up her craft stall which was full of lovely creations. She had produced lots of shopping bags appliquéd with different designs, one of which was bunting (I'd sketched out that idea to go with the beach huts on Friday night). She gave me a top tip which was to use bondaweb. I had something similar but it only irons on one side so isn't as good and therefore my appliqué isn't as perfect as hers was.

Once I arrived home, I set to cutting out the bag and the various parts of the owl. While I was doing this, the post man knocked on the door. We have one regular postman who has a cuddly Jess strapped to his bike so of course we call him Postman Pat and then we have another postman who steps in for him when he's unavailable. This was the postman who delivered my exciting package today. I had decided I needed seem cotton fabric in plain colours and I stumbled across Cheap Fabrics Online. I ordered some poly cotton in a variety of different colours, some lining and four reels of thread on Thursday and it arrived this morning. Now, that's good service and perfect timing. I used the purple cotton to line the owl bag and I'm planning on using the turquoise cotton for the beach hut bag. It took me all afternoon to make the owl bag as the appliqué was certainly trickier than the bags I made last weekend and for some reason, my sewing machine was very temperamental so the zig zag stitching wasn't perfect (just don't look too closely). I'm really pleased with the result and I think the different fabrics work really well together.

 It was the prefect bag to take a bottle of wine to my hostess tonight - thank you for a lovely evening, good company and tasty food which is always a winning combination.