Birds and bears on bags, oh my!

Spurred on by the 6th International Morsbagging Sunday and a request to donate bags for a "rubbish and bag free" primary school fête in Melbourne, I whipped up 11 Morsbags last Sunday. Two of these were stencilled...

This bag was decidedly plain and brown, so I decided it needed jazzing up with some birds sitting around on a wire. Which I made into a branch on the spur of the moment by branching one end and making the second one a little curvy.

Of course, once finished, I realised it looked a little silly. Talk about the world's strongest, skinniest branch!

Also, I recommend properly ironing down the freezer paper stencil and always painting away from the edges. Otherwise you end up with blobs like those you can see in the close-up above. But remember... it's a branch! Saved!

Shared under an cc-by-nc license

{source: Dr Case}

The inspiration for this stencil came from the above picture, snapped by Justin Case in Barcelona. I have a lot of my own pictures of street art that I've taken around the world which I also love to draw inspiration from.

The next Morsbag was cute on its own, made from a thrifted cushion cover. The polka-dots reminded me of snow flakes, so I decided a polar bear would be a nice addition.

Even though I've bought coloured screen painting ink, I still end up working predominantly in black and white.

And just to finish up, here's a picture of a stencilled Morsbag I made a little while ago from an old sheet. I have a lot more of this fabric, and I hope each one will each have a stencilled picture to distract people from the pattern!

Modified hand-me-down

Before ............................. After

Inspired by New Dress A Day, I modified this hand-me-down into something more suited to my style. Excuse the awful mirror shots! I obviously need to rope a friend into taking photos (or modelling) for me.

First thing I did was get rid of the floaty skirty bit and hem it. I have one shirt like that already and it always sits a bit awkwardly on me.

Next I removed the straps because the shirt was a few sizes too small and the sides were up in my armpits. Instead of cutting and hemming the front, I just folded it down and secured it with some tiny stitches. It stays up, but I have enough material left over to make some straps later, if I choose.

Hurry up, Summer!