…linen travel pouch…

Sometimes, I feel sorry for hackers. Imagine going to all the effort of hacking an insta, and finding you’d gotten lumped with me. If you were to scroll back through my DMs, or not even on insta, but through various chat histories on various platforms, a good portion of the messages are screenshots or shared posts or pinterest pins followed by “we should totally do this”. Invariably, the response is “YES!!!!!!’ (though I think I found the limit this week when I sent what I thought was a fabulous idea and got ghosted on Pinterest…)

One such idea was an amazing tool roll shared on instagram by @bookhou. She had created a lovely tool pouch for a magazine article, around the same time I had received my latest yardage of my favourite patchwork print echino line. I love the idea of tool rolls/pouches, and have never gotten around to making one, but with us spending increasingly more time at the farm, and carting projects back and forth, it seemed like all the stars had aligned, so to speak, to make it the perfect project.

If there’s one thing I love in my sewing projects, it’s using denim as a construction fabric. I’ve used it to make overnight bags. Morning baskets. Journal covers. Kindle covers. Clutches. Even nappy pouches. It’s a good, solid basic, that helps add structure, and is nice and neutral to then play with accent fabrics or embroidery for a pop of fun. With a new, bright linen to work with as my feature fabric, denim was my obvious choice for the secondary fabric.

Once I got underway, the project came together quite quickly. If I’d had a solid run at it, an afternoon would have been ample, but life has a way of laughing at one’s crafty plans, and so I had to steal a bit of time here and there to get it together. Cutting one day. The majority of the sewing only took an hour the following afternoon, and from there, it was just then the fiddly bits of working out what to use as the closure, and once I had that sorted, a quick thread snip, and it was ready to start hauling things back and forth to the farm.

Except the longer it sat on my desk, the more I was bugged by the way the corners on the closure flap kicked up – and that was without having anything in it. By the time I add some bits and pieces into it, that kick would become more pronounced. So this afternoon, I plan to unpick the end seam and top stitching, and insert an extra denim flap, to give it a bit more length and also shape away the sharp corners, to make it sit flatter.

I was planning on taking the pouch for it’s test run today. I’d planned to head to the farm for a bit, do our lessons outdoors. Enjoy the sunshine and let the kids run wild with plenty of space while I measured up the caravan for the next stage of it’s restoration that I want to get stuck into this weekend. Tuesday’s are normally river study day, but we’ve woken to a delightfully fresh morning and the soft patter of light rain. So we’ll do school in the school room. Only take a short nature walk in raincoats. I’m waiting on a yarn delivery, so I might take the opportunity of a cool day to snuggle underneath my current crochet project and add a couple of rows so I don’t feel quite so guilty at starting yet another project while multiple other languish unfinished. (Who am I kidding? I have zero shame in leaving projects unfinished to chase the next shiny idea…). Master12 has a film project to finish, so I need to teach him how to use Premiere Pro. Master10 is waiting on the next chapter of Goblet of Fire. I’m pretty sure rainy days were made for special treats, so I’m seeing some pikelets in our immediate future. I’ve been struggling with the last couple of days of painting prompts for squareathon, so I’m pushing those aside and planning a fresh start today with today’s prompt, and letting the catch-ups fall by the wayside. There’s a new sewing project demanding my attention too. Rain rain, stay and play, give me an excuse to craft all day…