Pat Hardie - Altered Art Studio

Adventures with artquilts, fibres, neckties and 2 very fine flatcoat retrievers - Gypsy & Reo

Friday, June 13, 2008

Pet Screen Tote bags

My trip out west introduced me to the idea of making tote bags out of Pet Screen. Yess this is material designed for screen doors particularly if you have animals in the house who 'abuse' the screening material. Our late golden retriever, Josee, was quite adept at using her nose to push open the patio secreen doors (home & cottage) thereby damaging the usual screening product. Not with this stuff; it is incredibly strong and resilient. The sewing machine kinda likes it too if not too many layers.
But back to the topic. What got me interested was not the mesh, but the fact that I had been given roughly 2 FQ's of 5 different fabrics by the Kemptville Quilters' Guild. At the same time I was advised that folks would be looking forward to what I might make out of this fabric. Hours and hours and hours later I managed to have only miniscule bits left over. Oops, nothing to use for the handles In the end I used some of plastic mesh canvas ( a great find at the Salvation Army Thrift store) that folks use for needle work. Just finish the edges with a blanket stitch and be done, right. Nothing is ever that simple as I added more stitching with 3 other colours. The beadwork consists of wooden beads from my macrame days with some old white shank buttons to secure the bottom using acrylic yarn which was crocheted at the top in order to attach the beads to the border.
The first tote is the Guild's fabric. The second contains fabric I won in a draw at a quilting store in Brockville. The top border and straps are - ta dah! made out of tie fabric. If you look closely you might notice the green yarn couching and a border of 3 yarns along the top portion. I'm now working on a third tote bag using scraps of jean fabric to create the main fabric details. It's going to be a while for sure.



1 Comments:

Blogger bbdesigns said...

Thanks for giving me new ideas for the corners! I just returned from a women't retreat were I learned how to make a bag. I immediately returned home and made 2 more. I love them! I'm trying to decide how much people would pay for them if I sold them at a fair...
Happy sewing!
BB

1:36 AM  

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