Dilly bag-along

Hi and welcome to my stop on the Dilly Bag Along hosted by the wonderful Angie at GnomeAngel!

I am a fairly recent convert to hand sewing and the hexagon but I am totally addicted now! I think the thing I love is having something portable to take each day and force me outside to eat lunch and sew hexies in the sunshine (well that is the aim)!

Now onto the Dilly bag! I am actually making two versions, both fussy cut but completely different. The first is using some gorgeous Australian fabric from Emma Jean Jansen's Terra Australis range which is my first attempt at that lovely fancy fussy cutting where you start to make secondary patterns.

The second (well there had to be a second as I knew my 4 year old would totally covet the first bag and want one of her own) is done with some fun fussy cutting of animals, mostly picked out my little Miss.

I have used English Paper Piecing to join my hexagons together instead of free-form hand sewing like the pattern says. Now I am going to be completely honest - I have no idea what templastic is or where to buy it! Instead I used the plastic base out of one of my green environmentally friendly bags. It seemed to do the trick!

The other handy little shortcut I did was to glue down the top section on the inside of the bag. I am a big fan of using glue in sewing and I use liquid Elmer's Washable glue with a special fine tip. I put a fine line of glue under the inside seam, then heat set it down with my iron. This meant that when I stitched in the ditch on the outside of the bag, I knew I was going to catch the inside hem (without using any pins!) I also used glue for the ends of the ribbon.

 So I hope I have given you a few tips - It is such a fun bag to make and it really holds a lot of stuff. Come back on the 17th October to see my finished bags (I reckon I can even persuade my daughter to show you how many stuffed toys it holds.)

Check out some of the other stops on the blog hop and there are a few more stops to go before the final linky party back at Gnome Angel! I believe there are some awesome prizes!!

Wednesday 23 September: Sharon @ Simple Things

Friday 26 September: Sharon @ The Projects of My Life

Wednesday 1 October: Judith @ Just Jude

Friday 3 October: Progress link party here @ GnomeAngel.com

Wednesday 8 October: Kate @ Stitched with Love

Friday 10 October: Kathy @ iamacraftykat ----------------that's me!----------------

Monday 13 October: Barbara @ Sunflower Stitcheries

Wednesday 15 October: Rachel @ Little White Dove

Friday 17 October: End link party here @ GnomeAngel.com