My sewing machine is now safely back from being serviced, which is handy as I've been itching to make something from the latest craft book I've bought.
I came across Andy Murray's Made By: An Inspiration to Make Things in this article in the Guardian Online. Being completely in agreement with the sentiment that nice tea towels are too good for the kitchen (witness the grey, creased mess that are my formerly pristine hand-printed Japanese tea towels), I duly trotted to Andy's website and purchased the book for £8.95.
The book arrived wrapped in tissue paper and signed by Andy himself. I also received a cute leaflet for todryfor.com, a designer tea towel boutique no less.
The book itself gives step-by-step instructions, with diagrams, for making a bag, laptop sleeve, watch strap, wallet and belt, all from tea towels. Interestingly, Andy uses glue to fix together the projects, but you can of course sew them instead, which is what I did. I guess the gluing makes the projects more accessible to a wider range of potential crafters, but I am particularly ham-fisted with adhesives so I thought it best to stick with the sewing...
I decided to tackle the bag first as a girl can't have too many (my husband may disagree...). It was actually him who bought me the supercute kawaii towels from Paperchase that I decided to use.
The project required three tea towels; one for for the outer bag, one for the lining and the third to make the sides and strap. I only had two, but as they seemed much bigger than standard tea towels (if there is such a thing?), I cut one side piece from the width of each. I used some pink webbing for the strap instead of making it from tea towel fabric.
The main challenge I found with sewing the bag with a machine is that I ended up with some quite thick pieces of towel to sew, paticularly as I did it all right sides together. My machine is quite lightweight and I managed to snap a needle (doh!). The flap of my bag wasn't quite as long as I intended either due to some mismanagement by me of the depth measurements. However, it was very easy to construct from the project's instructions.
To finish, I added a pink button to the flap for decoration and used velcro circles to fasten the bag inside.
Overall, I think it's really durable and rather cute. So, thanks Andy and I'm looking forward to making more things from tea towels very soon!
Melx
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