More Shopping Bags

After I started feeling better, I got tired of watching tv and reading all day. My face looks like I've been out hunting with Dick Cheney without a shotgun proof facemask and I didn't want to leave the house, so I finished a project I started over five months ago - shopping bags for my little group of childhood friends. I wanted to have the bags finished for our annual summer trip, but part of my procrastination oath was that I would start things and not finish them, and I can't break my oath.

Now I know what you're thinking: This took five months?!! I know because that's what I think too. But you see, I'm not an artist. I'm artistic, but not an artist. The difference being I can think it, but I can't draw it, at least not easily. I knew the picture I wanted to put on the bags, but I can't draw without looking at something, and even then not well.

I had asked a neighbor to sit in a lawnchair and let me take her picture so I could try to make a cartoon drawing from the picture, and she said she had a friend who was an artist and she asked him to draw the picture I described: a pretty woman sitting in a beach chair with a drink, wearing sunglasses and a tiara. It's a nice picture, just not quite what I wanted.

The girl just wasn't quite Diva-ish, and the tiara a little too crown-ish. I didn't know what to do about it, so I did nothing for a couple of months. Then I decided I could take the parts I liked and draw them into what I wanted. So I ended up with a composite sketch that I could draw onto the bags and then paint.

And the back


I only have two bags finished so far. I ran out of the tan canvas fabric. Eeek! I don't even remember where I bought it now. That's one of the drawbacks of procrastination. If I had made the bags right after I bought the fabric, I could have gotten more. Now I have to improvise.

You're probably wondering about the tiara, since it's not really part of the typical Diva ensemble (like I know what is). Several years ago, well nine, in fact, one of the ladies in our group decided we needed to start having an annual weekend together. We had gone on weekend trips together before, but it was usually impromtu and not at all organized. But on this first organized girls' weekend, we met in Dallas, and talked, ate, and shopped. Oh, and laughed. A lot. While on one of our shopping outings, we went into a jewelry/accessories store, and K spotted some tiaras in a glass case. I think the trip must have been around prom time that year. So K pretended to swoon, right there in the crowded store, and proclaimed loudly that she just had to have a tiara - that now that she had seen such a priceless wonder (it was $4.99), she didn't think she could live without one. We all laughed at her joke and at the tiaras, and walked on. All except M, who dropped back and bought the tiara.

The next morning in the hotel breakfast room, M walked up behind K and crowned her with the tiara while everyone else bowed down to her. She hammed it up and let the hotel staff call her 'madame' and 'your highness' and wore the tiara throughout breakfast.

And from that moment on, we were the Tiara Group, kind of like the Red Hat Society, except I think we laugh a lot more.

So you see why my Diva had to have a tiara.

Design Wall (Floor) Monday

Still laying on my design floor is this:

Remember this quilt?: (click the picture to read the post about it)

Now that I've finally got the backing ready, I'm nervous about putting it on. I know it needs to be done to keep the wool from falling out as the original backing deteriorates, but I'm really not sure how to baste it. I don't want to use pins because I think it could tear the old fabric. I'm going to put a few gentle stitches into the seams to hold this backing in place, but I need it basted first. So I'll probably study it awhile, or until Hubby tells me to get it off the floor.

In other areas of design, I've been working on my shopping bags.  Have you ever taken your cloth shopping bags to the grocery store, handed them to the checker, and seen a look of annoyance on her face? I've been using cloth bags for years and have seen that look a lot - to the point that at the Wall of Mart I finally told the checker to just put my groceries back in the basket. Then, after pulling the cart out of the way, I loaded them into my cloth bags. Why? Take a look at my cloth bags:

I got the two in the top left corner about 1986. They were freebies - one at the grand opening of a Hypermart (a precursor of Super Wally), and one at the grand opening of a Page Drug (before Tom Thumb had their own inside drug store). The two in the lower left corner were company freebies at a trade show. I actually bought the Brookshires bag in the top right corner (and it's the poorest quality of the lot), and based on the construction of all these bags and a paper bag, I made the one in the bottom right corner.

The reason most cashiers despise these bags (and the person who brings them in) is mainly because of the handle. For one thing, the handles are too long, and for another, they are attached side to side instead of front to back. Because of the handles, the bags don't fit well on their wire rack made for plastic bags. The long handles also make it harder to carry them without dragging on the ground.

I've been meaning to remake my bags for quite a while and a handle on the Page Drug bag was unravelled so it was a good time to try a remake. (I had replaced the other handle to match the size of original.) Oh, and this is the other side of the bag.

I took both handles off, cut a shorter piece of strap, and reattached front to back.

Better, and fits the wire rack but not well. The construction of the bag could be improved.

So I made a new bag based on the typical grocery store plastic bag.





Marti