Thursday, September 25, 2008

My creative Muse

My creative mused just popped by.

I have a whole collection of fabrics, and never decided what I wanted to do with them before now. (I got lucky about 3-4 years ago, and caught a JoAnn's Fabrics going out of business sale, and bought literally hundreds upon hundreds of yards of fabrics in various styles and types for 80-90% off).

However, my Muse has stopped in to pay a visit. While talking with Misty today, we were discussing a recent debate on Etsy's forums about what is and isn't allowed for use when doing "gift baskets". We fall into the allowable category with ours, however, we also hit upon a way to be even more creative about it, and also make our "baskets" homemade as well. (I'd say hand made, but I only know how to sew on a machine...lol)

So, I am off now to come up with a nice simple design for bags to hold our Basics Gift Set, which currently comes in a basket. When I'm finished designing and stitching a few, they will come in homemade cloth bags that can be re-used as travel bags or small make-up kits.

Yay for creativity on sloggy, rainy, icky days!


Edited to add:


Well, my muse is coming along, but now I need to decide where to go with it. As you can see, the bag is made of the same fabric inside and out, and currently has a bit of a lip/hem at the top.

Now, I can do 2 things from here.

I can flip the lip to the inside of the bag, and use magnetic strips to hold the bag closed,


or


I can leave the lip where it is and take myself to the store (in all this icky weather madness) and buy some grosgrain ribbon and coordinated thread,

( the nice thing about construction thus far, is the threads are all hidden, so no one has to know I only have white!) then come home and pop on handles.


So readers: What say you?
Handles?
Magnetic closure (think, make up travel bag)?
Other ideas?


6 comments:

Michelle Brunner said...

Can't wait to see your gift baskets!

WickedSoaps said...

I still say handles for it with the ribbon. And then we use some of the satin and velvet fabrics for pouches.

Unknown said...

Why don't you use the fabrics to line the inside of you baskets? A fabric to coordinate with your soaps? Then maybe a small matching or coordinating fabric to hold one of the soaps to be used later as a ipod holder -- or something -- just a few thoughts throwing at ya.

Amy said...

Good idea.

I started with the bags, because I'm really good at straight line sewing on the machine, and really spacially retarded. (Its hard for me to guage distance and depth without a functioning pre-made pattern to work from).

But I will definately try the basket liner idea. The soap holders we're actually going to do as well, but we're looking at flannel and terry, sort of like a soap saver style bag. :)

WickedSoaps said...

I like the basket liner idea...we'll have to try that, too.

Unknown said...

Yes, the soap saver idea is great, I've actually seen crocheted little bags where you can put the soap inside and use to wash with, maybe something like that added to match the fabrics -- terry cloth would work well for this too!