Kaffe handbag and a vintage bequest...

I have done it!  The handbag that I wanted to make with the Kaffe Fasssett fabric that I fell in love with is finished!  

I had great fun quilting around the pattern, using 3 different styles for the 3 different circular designs.

 (my phone does ridiculous things with colour, but it's closer to the central image than the outside ones)

I found a lovely looking pattern for free after a quick search, which you can find here... 

http://delphinium.co.nz/pdfFiles/Plenty%27O%27Pockets.pdf

I used the Kaffe fabric for one  part of the bag and used some contrasting/matching (not really sure which it is...?) to make the second part.  And here is the final bag...!!!

 I decided to do a different quilting pattern on each side to give it a bit of interest, along with the different colours.

I LOVE the mottled green binding that I found, which just makes the whole bag pop (the photo doesn't do it justice I'm afraid.).

I didn't follow the pattern to the letter, as I wanted a thicker and longer handle, but I think it worked very well - I'm now using it as my every day normal handbag and it works brilliantly.

The other bit of news is that my mother went to my Gran's house to clear some items out after she died a few years ago.  The house has been used by my cousins for university lodgings for a while and now it's empty again she wanted to see what was there.  And she came back with the most amazing thing.  

A bag full of scraps!  

But not just any old scraps, it's scraps of silk tie samples from my great grandfather's job where he designed ties for (amongst other people) the royal family.  I haven't had much of a chance to look at them yet, but they are in the most amazing condition considering that they are a minimum of 60 years old.  There are scraps of paper in amongst them, one with a date in the 1880s, and another piece of paper that is falling apart, at closer look is actually a photo of a man in very important military style garb.  

It's not a great photo, but just look at all the different types of patterns and colours of all of these!!!!!

I would estimate there are thousands of samples  and I have yet to quite work out what I'm going to do with them - definitely make a quilt, but size, pattern etc...  I'll take my time over those - it'll be a family heirloom quilt like no other!