Guest Post Hannah Blythin

Friday 7 June 2013
Welcoming Hannah Blythin...

guest posting with her sewing shopper tutorial...

This week I have been very fortunate to have Hannah Philpott as a guest blogger this week. Hannah's tutorial on her beautiful flower arrangement shopping bag inspires you to take on a stitching project this weekend.

 Over on Hannah's blog hannahphilpott.wordpress.com  you will be inspired to 'Make, upcycle, thrift. Learn something new as often as possible. Never spend more than you have to.'

That sounds like a must read if you love baking, thrifty finds and sewing. So over to Hannah ..


 Flower Arrangement Shopper

I’ve been struggling to decide what I was going to do for my first guest post. All my inspiration had dried up. So I turned to a lovely book for some ideas. I got The Gentle Art of Stitching by Jane Brocket for Christmas and I absolutely love it. It has got lots of pretty hand stitching projects with beautiful pictures to get the creative juices flowing.

I had a flick through and found some very simple fabric flower arrangements using scraps of fabric. So I decided to give it a go.

I started by raiding my fabric box. I try never to buy fabric as it is so expensive, so use old clothing and fabrics from bedding and curtains. Really whatever I can get my hands on. I found an old dress that I wore when I was pregnant with both my children. It was a bold flower print, with lots of bright colours. So I got snipping, cutting out some of the boldest flowers. I wasn’t too precious about how I cut them out as I wanted it to look fairly organic. I found a piece of yellow gingham which I decided to use for the vase. Once I had cut out and chosen all my pieces, I arranged them onto a piece of pink fabric and pinned them.



I used some very simple running stitches and blanket stitches to attach the flowers and vase to the fabric.

When I stood back I realised that it needed something extra, so I added a couple of Suffolk puffs to the arrangement, plus a few buttons and a scrap of ribbon to decorate the vase. This added a further element to texture and depth to the arrangement.


 


A little tip for stopping your ribbon from fraying at the ends is to very carefully waft a flame from a lighter or match at the ends and this will meld the fibres together.

Jane Brocket frames her flower arrangements but I wanted to make something a little more useful with mine, so I decided to use it to decorate a shopper.

Rummaging around in my fabric box again I found some fab stripy fabric from Ikea that was left over from some blinds I had made last year. I roughly zig zag stitched my arrangement onto the front bag panel and then assembled it all. And this is how it came out!

I am making all of my birthday and Christmas presents this year, so I think that this will be going in my pressie pile.


Thank-you Hannah. You can follow Hannah on Twitter @MrsBlythinMakes

2 comments:

  1. I've seen Hannah's shopper before and am still seriously impressed. I particularly like the puff flower. Thanks for posting this.

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  2. Yes, Hannah's bag is amazing and thank-you Hannah for such a fab guest post. I love the flower, if you fancy having a go they are called Suffolk Puffs. I used to make them out of old milk bottle tops! I am inspired too!

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