Something a Little Different for Scrap Happy Day in April

Instead of patchwork blocks or even the beginning of a new quilt top out of the Parts Department I've repurposed a vintage handkerchief. I didn't think to take a picture before I embarked on this project but I can show you what I've done with it. 😁

I've been following the #roxysjournalofstitchery projects on YouTube ever since volume one. They are currently in volume five. This time around there's a different project for each month. The first prompt this year was to make a trifold pouch. I haven't been making with them but the idea has stayed with me. And then an actual use for such a thing cropped up in my life. 

I sifted through the vintage hankies I've been collecting to see what might work for a small pouch. I determined that I wanted something about 6" wide and 4" high when it was completed. I found one white hankie that had been embellished with a spray of embroidered blue flowers in one corner. Then I turned up a blue hankie that had raggedy edges and a couple of tiny holes. That was all I needed to get started.

 Here you can see how I used the corner of the white handkerchief and what's left of the blue one. I knew I wanted a pointed flap on my pouch so I arranged the floral spray to accent that triangle. You can also see that I used snippets of lace to fill in the plain blue areas. All of these components came to me second hand from various sources. 

 

 I used a number 12 perle cotton to seed stitch the blue areas that were left exposed after I'd applied the lace bits. There's no stitching in the printed areas of the hankie, except where I had to piece two halves together to get the length I wanted for my finished pouch. I used a variegated perle cotton to blanket stitch the floral spray in place. 

 

 And voila, my finished pouch! I used a button from my mother's button box and bit of braid I'd acquired somewhere along the way to wrap around the shank of the button to keep my pouch closed. 

I lined the pouch with a print I've had in my stash for heaven only knows how long. It felt like it could have been a design from the 1950's, which is my guess as to the age of the blue hankie. Plus, the colors worked. 😉

 This is what my pouch looks like on the back now. I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out. It even came out to the size I intended.

Scrap Happy Day is hosted on the 15th of each month by Kate in Australia and Gun in Sweden, giving us an opportunity to share how we've used scrap materials (not just fabric) or repurposed something. You can see what everyone else has done by clicking on their names in the list below.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Lynda, Birthe, Turid, Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa, 
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

Weekly Stitch Entries for March (photo heavy post)

 In case you didn't know, I'm keeping a stitch journal with Kathryn on YouTube this year. We're not learning new embroidery stitches though. It's more of an opportunity to do some relaxed hand sewing each week. 

For the first week of March Kathryn was inspired by Emily Dickinson's phrase "Hope is the thing with feathers..." She showed us the type of feather quilters have historically used to hold together the layers in a quilt and then encouraged us to create our own fantasy feather. I ended up riffing off of an ostrich plume I have.

The following week we made samples inspired by the kawandi that are made by Siddi women in India. 

The patches in true kawandi would have their raw edges folded under. I went with a raw edge method. The corner decorations are called phula, which means flower. The quilt is considered naked without phula on the corners. Kawandi are made without batting as we here in the US know it. Instead they use layers of cast off clothing or other linens. There may be more than three layers depending on how warm the end product needs to be. My sample is only two layers, the top and the back.

I used a large-ish scrap from a recent quilt for the back of my kawandi. 

Kathryn had a special project for us the week of the equinox (spring here in the northern hemisphere). We could make two little folios of fabric. One went into our stitch journals and the other was buried outdoors somewhere to be retrieved at the solstice in June. Kathryn wrapped her fabric with elements from nature and a bit of rusty metal. The whole idea is to let nature do whatever she wants with our bundles and to see what that will be. 

I put a scrap of crochet on the covers of my two folios.

And this phrase stitched on the interior conveys the whole purpose behind the exercise.

My second booklet looks much the same on the outside.

You can see I didn't even bother to press the muslin I used for the folio.

I wrapped my buried bundle with some onion skins and a clipping from the hedge outside my studio window. I think there were a couple more items but I don't remember what they were now. Guess I should have made more notes! I did at least take a photo of where the bundle is buried so I know where to dig in June. (It's under the rock.)

For the last week of March Kathryn wanted to celebrate the friendships that have been created in the stitching community. She turned again to traditional quilt making techniques and had us make Friendship Stars. Hers was hand pieced. I machine pieced mine but then had fun decorating the background with star stitches in a variegated perle cotton. 

That's the first quarter of the year complete. 😊 So far, so good!