Is that the Easter bunny I hear?

I think he's left a clutch for your littlest friends to store their Easter treasures in!

Today is my lovely sister-in-law's birthday. Happy Birthday Katie B!
This is what I made her:

Katie loves the beach so I made her a bag to take swimming. There is a matching zipper purse for her to put her wet swimmers in after she has finished her swim.

I bought this fabric on a whim.The big bold tangerine coloured flowers just made me think of Katie and I loved that the laminate made it shiny. There was one small problem, though... I have  never sewn anything with laminated fabric! I had a very vague conversation with the woman where I bought it (Will was with me and not in the mood for fabric shopping!!) about needing a special foot for the sewing machine. I promptly ignored her sound advice and thought  I  could google a technique when I got home. One small problem - unbeknown to me our computer was ill. My font of all knowledge was out of action.

So with a baby sleeping, no other fabric options and a deadline of 2 hours this is what I came up with. I call it my Snap and Wrap (or sometimes Wrap and Snap} technique!

Snap
Firstly you can't pin laminated fabric. If you do you will be left with pin holes in your project.I have to say using my daughters' hair clips was fun. There is something very reassuring about Hello Kitty smiling up at you as you sew. Less cute but definitely more functional were the black paper clips - the fabric didn't move around at all.

Wrap
When I sewed with right sides together, I had no problems sewing the fabric at all. I just increased my stitch length a little, decreased my tension a little and went slowly. I didn't want to make any mistakes and ruin my beautiful fabric.
When it came to sewing on the laminate itself things got a little tricky. I was ruffling the under layer and the upper layer was barely moving through the machine. Baking Paper was my friend. Wrapping whatever I was sewing in Baking Paper made it move through the machine like any other fabric. I then just carefully ripped the Baking Paper off when I had finished sewing. I think the resulting stitches look pretty good.

If you are planning to make something more complicated like a raincoat or be a regular user of laminated fabric I would buy a teflon foot. Yes, that is what everyone seems to recommend if you google "how to sew laminated fabric". But if you occasionally want to have a play with laminated fabric try this technique. I am happy with the way it worked out for me!

I've begun to wonder about Green Bags. (I think that may be an Australian term. A "green bag"  is basically a multi-use bag you buy to put your grocery shopping in.) They are ubiquitous and they are ugly! They were originally designed to improve on the "one use" plastic bag . The theory was - buy a few of these bags, take them on every shopping trip and use single use bags as little as possible. But everywhere I go these days someone wants to sell me a green bag. They look slightly bemused when I decline and push my purchased items into my ever so large handbag!

I worry that the green bag has become so readily available and so cheap, we have started to use them like the single use plastic bags they were designed to replace. In 2008 the Wall Street Journal reported that only 10% of people re-use their re-usable shopping bags! These bags use more energy to make and take longer to break down than single use bags but we are using them like single use bags!

So, I have decided - I am not going to buy any more of those ugly things.

Instead, I will make simple bags that I will enjoy using. I will upcycle where I can, or if not, at least make something I am happy to use over and over and over and over again. Which is the whole point of a Green Bag in the first place!

This is the first one I made:

I was quite excited about the layout of the fabric and the effect it created on the bag. I know it will be holding my shopping for a long time to come.

Right! I'll get off my very high horse now..........

PS. My apologies for not posting for a while. We had a major case of antiviral software-itis. To those of you who are as computer illiterate as I am, can I share something I have learned? If you have two pieces of anti-virus software running on your computer at the same time, your computer is so busy trying to avoid viruses it can't do anything else!
The promised zippered pencil case tutorial should be up in the next day or two.

Inspiration hits in strange places.  Late last night I when was icing cupcakes for snack , I suddenly knew the look I wanted for Lizzy's  new library bag.

After a stash raid and an hour at the sewing machine - the hundreds and thousands library bag!

Now there's another reason to love going to the library!