Home Sweet Home Sewing

Imagine my delight when I was contacted this past summer to take part in a virtual book tour to promote a beautiful new sewing book, written by the lovely,  Helen Philipps.  I have long been a fan of Helen's sewing and her gorgeous books, so you know I said, "Yes, please!", to her kind invite.  Home Sweet Home Sewing, published this past autumn, by @tuvapublishing,  is bursting with a charming array of patchwork projects, ranging from an adorable pincushion to a beautiful quilt and all enticingly presented.  

I chose to sew her Flower Bag because it's the most darling gift bag!

This design recommends the use of decorator weight fabric, to give the bag some structure, but I wanted to use a pretty border print quilting weight cotton.  To make this work, I added two layers of fusible interfacing to boost it to decorating weight fabric.

I  love the special detail of a pretty flower embellishment for the bag as given in Helen's instructions, but  then I added a piece of felt to the back so I could sew on a pin clasp, making the flower into a brooch. This gives me more placement options on the bag (or for more fun, even wearing it!). 

The book features pre-made handles for this bag, but I opted to sew my own handles for my version and used twill tape as the core, encased in double fold self made binding.  The twill tape adds just the right amount of structure to the handles, without them being too stiff (or too floppy!).

 This is a fun, easy to sew bag that gives great results, with lots of fun embellishment potential!  I have plans to sew more versions for gift giving throughout the year.

Thank you so much, Helen and Tuva Publishing for generously inviting me to be a part of a delightful, inspiring book tour and sending me a copy of this enchanting book! You would be correct in thinking that this will be the first of many projects I will be sewing from this book!😉