Birthday party season is almost upon us (in Girl Lacer’s classroom last year, they had the neat idea of a picture of a train above the coat pegs, the train was pulling carriages, one for each month and they cut out pictures of the children and put them in the appropriate carriage for their birthday month, literally most of the class were squeezed into the September and October carriages, then a huge gap, with another far smaller concentration of summer born children at the end, so as Girl Lacer is a fairly popular girl, it means a lot of birthday parties in September and October), the first birthday party is this weekend. Now lots of birthday parties means lots of birthday presents, this was ok back when I was more actively selling children’s books, but two years of birthday parties has pretty much diminished my stock, so as anyone who regularly follows this blog would have seen, last summer I started making my own art bags as gifts, starting out as drawstring bags, I did a tote bag version for a party in the summer holidays and now it’s gone up to the embroidered tote bag with inside pencil pocket (at this point I emphasise that I’m not doing this for every party, I’ll only do it if I think the child will appreciate it). The embroidered bit was inspired by some free embroidery patterns featured on the Sew Mama Sew blog, unfortunately I’m blogging from my phone right now, so I can’t do links, but the link to the blog is on my blog roll, then go into August and search for Sarah Jane Studios. The pencil pocket idea I got from another blog, a while ago, so unfortunately I can’t remember the blog’s name, sorry!
I’m actually making two of these, the one in the photos below is the first completed one, even though I’ve had the embroidered front piece for the first bag I planned finished ages ago. Luckily I haven’t got anywhere near doing the pencil pocket on the other bag, as I don’t think I will again, that design doesn’t hold many pencils (only five).
