Circus Babychange Bag Pattern

The circus babychange bag is finished!! And here it is being modelled by Elona and Sasha (my godson).

Fran hasn’t seen it yet but we think she’ll love it! I’ve carefully put together the instructions and pattern for making it and hope one or two people at least will enjoy making it. If you don’t want to make a bag, then why not make the applique on plain linen or canvas and mount it onto a frame for more up-to-date wall art for a child’s room.

 

Just click here to download your free pdf – and if anyone does make it I’d love to see how it turned out!!

 

I’m enchanted by some of the lovely vintage embroidery transfers still available – I inherited quite a collection and have since purchased one or two (or maybe more!) on ebay and other sites. Flushed with the success of my circus bag project I decided to rummage around in my cupboard and came up with a lovely sheet of bluebird transfers….. added some applique to one of the designs … and here is the work in progress.

 

 

I think this would look great as a panel on a project bag .. hmm … will have to play around with some of my fabric stash and put a front together. I did this with a lovely little handbag I’ve just finished – based on a shape I loved from one of those great Japanese craft books. They’re wonderful as the instructions are so clear you don’t need to read Japanese – which is just as well really!!

 

For this project I used some really old (so vintage they’re nearly antique) scraps of Laura Ashley fabric – the date on the selvedge read MCMXXIX (the year I was 18 aaarrgghhh!) – the colours worked really well with the embroidery. This is my “cheating” technique where I scan the transfer and fill in the image with “applique feedsack” on Paintshop before printing it onto fabric and embroidering the details. I think this method works really well for more fiddly designs as I’m not always the neatest or most patient embroiderer.