Another pyramid bag and a garden piece

Well my GS has gone off to their villa in Florida for 2 weeks and so I won't miss him so much we have set up Skype on the computers so we can keep in touch. I will be able to see him and talk to him live using web cams. Aren't computers brilliant??

First I will show the bag I mentioned on my last post. I used the pyramid shape as the design source. It was a lot more complicated than the little gold purse and there was a lot of trial and error. I used some brocade that I had in stock which had flowers on it similar to some in the Egyptian wall paintings -(well close enough).

The base was square and I made four double sided triangles stiffened with a stiff polythene which used to be scan cards for our old video recorder. This was also used to stiffen the base.
Between the triangles were inserted gussets so that the bag would open.
Because of the construction I had to hand stitch one side of the base.

I used four bras strap rings (I throw nothing away) and covered them with a blue and gold thread. These were attached to the peak of each triangle. I made cords using the same thread and large gold beads and threaded them through the four covered rings to make a draw pull fastening. The gussets - unfortunately - have to be pushed in when the bag closes. I tried several ideas to make this automatic as the strings were pulled but none worked satisfactorily.
















This is the completed bag when closed.










Many thanks to Karen for her award. I have been looking at her garden blog and her garden is much further on than mine. My bluebells are just throwing up the flower head buds whereas her bluebells are in bloom. I use my garden as a design source so I am going to include a photo of one of the plants which is at its best at the moment. It is the Piris which has incredible pinky red new growth. In the next couple of weeks these leaves will change to variegated green like the rest of the plant.


I used this plant and this photo (taken this time last year) as the design source for a piece of work. We had just replaced a fence and I took photos of the newly sawn wood which had a really nice texture.
I combined the two in Photoshop.
Then interpreted this image into textile piece.
It involved inkjet printing onto dyed scrim and craft Vilene then hand and machine stitching. The Piris was cut out and proud mounted onto the wood interpreted background.
I also created this digitial image which is on my web site with many others.


I have a lot of work in progress at the moment and have spent this evening spray dying some fabric for another bag. I am having a go at screen printing and have made a screen stencil of Nefertiti which will be printed on the bag fabric. So... watch this space.