Bags, bags and more bags................

http://madcreekdesigns.etsy.com

Bags, Bags and more bags........

I love bags, all sorts of bags. Here's an adorable but practicle bag I stumbled upon at etsy this morning. I'm always tossing little trash on the floor of my car, saying to myself, I'll clean that up when I get home. Or I keep a few plastic shopping type bags in the car for cleaning up and they look atrocious. Here's a great solution from The Mod Mobile-Modern Accessories for your Automobile by Allyson Hill.

I like the looks of her straps. You can customize them to fit your car and where you want the bag to hang. You might want a couple of these, front seat, back seat. Check them out at http://allysonhill.etsy.com

My black bag.............

Here's my bag that I carry everyday. I can get tons of stuff in this baby. I love prairie points, too. They dress up the ugliest things, don't they?

Do you get the idea that I like black and white yet? I think I have since I was a kid. When I was a teen, my mother finally trusted me enough to decorate my own room. Well, that was in the late 60's, pop culture was in full swing, op art, Beatles music, the Mod Squad and The Monkeys were my favorite tv shows.

I had a nice big bulletin board, the kind you can push pins into so I started by drawing an optical illusion onto it and then painted it black and white. Hard to describe in words, sure wish I had a picture. Anyway, from there I purchased this really cool bedspread with my babysitting money. It was black of course and had an alligator texture. Get this! It was vinyl. Yes, vinyl. Not to cozy at all but I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Well, Mom wasn't that thrilled with it nor the black and white color scheme. So she introduced a little color into my world. For which I'm eternally grateful. We painted the walls this beautiful celery green and I've never been able to reproduce or find the exact shade since. I do believe it's imprinted on the back of my eyeballs, I still look for that green today. And my curtains were burnt orange. Now burnt orange and avocado green were very popular back then, remember? But I hated those colors. THEN! I thought they were "old lady" colors. But today, I love them. Put one of those into a boring quilt and WOW! They're your zingers. THANKS, MOM!

chris

The Old Bag...............or "what I did yesterday"

Well, my fingers are sore from hand quilting so I took the day off and worked on a new tote bag or two. I have a stash of old jeans, blue, black, tan, white, etc. Every now and then I make something out of a pair, mostly tote bags. They're so fun to make, I never make the same one twice. Just depends on what size those jeans were and what details the jeans originally have. I like to keep as much of the original detail as possible.

I hated to throw out the remainder of the jeans after making this big tote but there wasn't enough "jean" to make much so the mini tote was born. Might make a cute little girls tote or maybe it's just perfect to carry around 6 cans of your favorite soda pop, I don't know. Yes, it's a bit weird but have you seen some of the bags young women are carrying around today? All sorts of fun and funky bags. But I think the little one still needs some embellishing, don't you?

chris

Recyling those plastic bags..........

I just stumbled upon what I think is such a clever idea. How to recycle those plastic shopping bags we seem to hoard for some reason, or just throw away after we unpack our groceries. I know Pam has a stash almost as big as her fabric stash. I just read a tutorial at EtsyLabs here,

http://etsylabs.blogspot.com/2007/05/long-overdue-fusing-plastic-bag.html

and a very cool YouTube tutorial to actually sew a tote bag here,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB1mE8e35UY


It's all about layering the plastic bags, ironing to fuse them together and make strong and sewing a messenger or tote bag from them. I'm always forgetting my cloth grocery bags when I make an unplanned stop at the grocery store. Maybe if I kept several of these in the car, I'd have plenty handy all the time. This looks kind of fun to do, too. When I see things like this, I always have to hit myself in the head and say, "why didn't I think of that".