In search of the perfect peg bag (the world's most trivial quest)

Ignore what I said in my last post about not being a domestically obsessed perfectionist – I've now made not one but three peg bags. I realised as soon as I finished the first that it could do with some modifications – the opening was too big and also a bit low – and also that it would have been more sensible to make my prototype out of scrap fabric, not the real thing, in case of such stuff-ups. Oh well.

During the week I made a version with a buttonhole-stitched opening, which is okay but still not quite there. Yesterday I made a modified version of the first one, and I think it's a case of third time lucky. I even wrote down the pattern rather than just relying on memory if ever I want to make another. Unlikely – I think three peg bags per lifetime are more than enough. It's not as though I own three houses, after all (or even one) so two of these bags will be given away.

So that's three of the six finished rose bouquets from the chopped-up tablecloth accounted for. I have plans for the others – check this space.

Prettying up the prosaic

My crafty inclinations lately have leant towards repurposing neglected embroidery. Today's project was refurbishing my peg bag – a phrase that I realise might make me sound like some Martha Stewart wannabe domestic perfectionist, which I'm really, really not. However, I've had my old peg bag for several years and while it's perfectly functional, every time I hang my clothes out, one more tiny fraction of my aesthetic self despairs and dies. Mundane chores like washing should be jollied up as much as they possibly can, I reckon, hence my desire for a more pleasing peg bag than this one.

Before: plain, serviceable, dreary.

 Among my many unfinished craft projects is an embroidered tablecloth I started straight after either school or uni – in other words, a good long while ago. It had two bouquets of cross-stitched roses along each side, and the only thing I can remember about doing it was that I seemed to be at it for years, and it was tedious beyond belief. I finished six-and-a-bit bouquets before giving up about twenty years ago, having realised, I think, that even if I did finish it I was never going to use it as a tablecloth. It was another example of my tastes being much more nanna when I was young than they are now – and nanna in a daggy way, not in a cool, ironic, retro way.


So I decide to chop it up and give it a new life as a peg bag. I went slightly astray along the way – because I like doing things but not planning them, most of my projects are made in a fairly random and ad hoc way. So it was with this. I made a sort-of pattern from the old bag, but cut out the embroidered piece for the front of the bag before realising I'd positioned it so that the opening would cut away part of the embroidered design. That meant I needed to cut another piece. The binding and seams on the front needed to be unpicked and resewn at one point too – despite having the old bag right there, did I consult it for guidance? Did I bollocks.

But in the end it came together. I reshaped the top and used an old wooden coathanger rather than the nasty plastic number from the original bag. I even covered the wire hook with some bias binding (umm, what was I saying about not being an obsessive domestic perfectionist?). In fact I took a lot of care with the whole thing, despite generally being horribly impatient. Doing something properly, when I've got the time, ends up being so much more satisfying than just finishing it quickly.

After: bright, practical, bigger. And a bit nanna,
but in a good way, I think.

The final step was a rigorous pressing, because it's linen, which creases like a bastard. I'm rather chuffed with the result, and I'm sure washday will be a bit less dull with this hanging cheerily on the line.

And now it must be time to put a load of washing on.

Win-a-scarf competition closing soon!

Thanks to all those who've submitted entries – I've enjoyed reading about the crafty and not so crafty among you. For those who haven't entered yet but still intend to, this is a bossy reminder to get your comments in by the end of October. Overseas readers are encouraged to enter, too – so long as you have a mailbox somewhere on this planet, I'm happy to send the scarf anywhere should you win it.

One reader has said that you need to press the 'leave a comment' button several times before Blogger obeys, so keep pressing. The comments seem to turn up eventually.

I'm hoping the winner might oblige me by sending a photo of herself/himself wearing the scarf. It's not a condition of entry, although it would please me to see my handiwork in its new habitat. At the moment there are only five entries, so your chances of winning are higher than most internet competitions can boast! Good luck ...

Vanquishing the red menace

I thought this day would never come – today I finished the red jumper!

I've been plugging away intermittently since I last posted about it, refusing to be deterred by the inevitable stuff-ups, such as the back, which provoked some sighing and tutting. When I resumed it I realised my calculations from the previous session were wrong and that if I continued as planned it would to be too long, so I ripped back about 15 rows – and the instant I'd finished, realised that I'd been right in the first place and that I needed those 15 rows back. Numerate people must find life so much easier than I do.

This is the sort of setback that usually, well, sets me back – sometimes for eight or ten years, as previous posts have probably made clear by now. But this time I ploughed on stoically, reinstated the 15 rows then continued and cast off the shoulders. And then I had four pieces waiting to be joined.

After joining the shoulder seams I started on the neckband using my beloved circular needles. I can't stand straight needles as they always seem to be poking me, and I've used circulars almost exclusively since discovering them (except when knitting narrow pieces, for which I often use double-pointed needles). Then it was just a matter of going round and round in 2 x 2 rib until I felt it was long enough. This was a nice no-brainer for in front of the telly.

I decided to join the sleeve seams and side seams in one go, as I used to do when I made shirts. It's so much easier – no wrestling with tubes of fabric, just flat pieces.

 Tying the two pieces together at intervals like this makes it easier to wrangle the whole thing and to make periodic micro-adjustments when you find one side is slightly longer than the other.

One sleeve joined flat to the shoulder.

I used mattress stitch to sew the whole lot up as it gives an almost invisible seam. Also, as it's worked from the right side, it lets you easily check how the right side is looking as you go, making it easier to match patterns or decreases, as here.

Matching the decreases on the sleeve seam.

Mattress stitch is one of those wondrous little techniques (like making your own bias binding, learning a provisional cast-on in knitting, or doing tailor's tacks, something that I tried for the first time only last weekend) that seems like too much bother until you try it. However, it's easy to learn and, once mastered, makes you feel one step further towards craft goddesshood. Give it a go, any knitters among you who until now have been wedded to backstitch. (Although in its defence, backstitch gives you nice strong shoulder seams.)

For the neatness freaks – almost invisible seams!

 And this – looking decidedly pink, which it isn't – is the result:

A warm, cosy jumper, all finished and ready to give to charity – just in time for summer.

Lessons in being ladylike

A rainy, cold, appointmentless Sunday seemed destined for craft, and some neglected embroidery took my fancy. This hasn't been bothering me as much as many of my other unfinished projects – possibly because it takes up less space than, say, a knitted jumper and a barrowload of yarn – but it must be one of the oldest unfinished objects I've got.

I started it about 25 years ago and it's a dressing table set consisting of two small doileys and one large – further proof, if any were needed, that I spent a lot of my youth channelling my inner nanna when more age-appropriate activities might have included wearing blue eyeshadow, sporting big hair, drinking Malibu and dancing to Duran Duran. I didn't even have a dressing table back then; I do now, but I also have no desire to gussy it up with embroidery.

I still like the design of violets, though, but I'm aware my taste is a bit suspect, so I showed it to my craft-group friends. They're all much younger and groovier than I am, and they didn't make gagging noises, so it can't be that bad. I decided it could be repurposed, and that one of the smaller doileys might make a fetching pincushion.

Step 1 was to trace around the violets using two glasses; the inner line was to embroider on and the outer one to cut out along.

The idea was to chain stitch around the edge of the two pieces, cut them out then join them together using whip stitch.

This is a technique I learnt about a few years ago when I was editing an embroidery book. I mentally filed it away as possibly being handy in the future, but I'd never actually used it until now – or so I thought. However, when I was making this pincushion I had a sudden flashback to embroidery class at school when I was about seven, and the first thing I ever embroidered; a pincushion whose two circular pieces were joined in just this way. That weirded me out more than slightly. It's craft Groundhog Day again!

For a long time, that pincushion remained my only embroidery project. I didn't like sewing as a child. I was a tomboy, and also apparently an infant feminist. I  disapproved of having to learn to sew; this was about 1970, yet it could have been 1870 or even 1770. Mrs Gilchrist, our sewing teacher, insisted that any thread we used should be no longer than the distance from our fingertips to our elbow; this wasn't so it wouldn't tangle, or to prevent us from stabbing a fellow tot in the eye while flailing about, but because working with long threads wasn't 'ladylike'.

I thought then, and I still think, that no little girl at any stage in history should ever be expected to concern herself with what is and isn't ladylike. I continued to cut my threads as long as I wanted and to get into genteel trouble for it, and once I'd finished that pincushion I didn't pick up a needle again until I was about fifteen. Then I went berserk and was obsessed with embroidery for about ten years. The violet project dates from then.

So, back to the present. Once I'd chain-stitched the inner circle on each piece I cut them both out, leaving a small seam allowance, which I finger-pressed to the wrong side. Next I whip-stitched the two pieces together, remembering to make sure the grain on both ran the same way.

I sewed about three-quarters of the way round, leaving a gap through which I could stuff it. Traditionally pincushions are stuffed with sawdust, but all I had was polyester fibrefill. Despite its small size the pincushion soaked up stuffing at about the same rate as a Romantic poet imbibing opiates.

Once the seams started straining I finished sewing it up then pummelled it about a bit to settle the filling more evenly.

A suitable accessory for a lady.

In retrospect I could have machine-sewed around most of the outside for strength and just whip-stitched the embroidery for show, but it doesn't matter. The whole thing took me a pleasurable couple of hours and I like the result.

What to do with the rest of the dressing table set, though? I think I'll make a little needle case out of the smaller doiley. At the moment I can't think of a possible use for the larger one, and even if I could, I'd have to finish the embroidery first.

Check back here in another 25 years.