On a recent trip away, I acquired some more vintage patterns. This is not an altogether unusual occurrence but instead of just adding them to the pile of somewhat neglected patterns like I normally do, I’ve started scanning them. My collection of patterns is fairly modest, but it’s taking a little while to scan all the patterns, let alone start cataloguing them so they’ll be easy(-ish) to find.

Since being the epic scanning journey, I’ve rediscovered some lovely patterns, some patterns that haven’t aged all that well and some unintentionally hilarious styling. Here’s an example of a nice pattern with unintentionally (?) hilarious styling:

Every time I see that photo it makes me chuckle. I think it’s because those glasses have a real ‘Kim Jong-Il looking at things‘ vibe about them…

As a result of finding gems like the photo above, I’ve started a new blog with bits and pieces of my collection that I like or have found amusing. The usual new blog caveats apply — I’m still working on the design, and there are only three posts so far. This is not the end of this blog, it’s just a side project. More accurately, it’s another blog to add to the collection of blogs that I rarely update.

I am ridiculously excited to have finally finished a project. My last reported project was the draft stopper in September last year, and the lack of finishing has made me a little antsy. Even though I’m not a craft factory and this hobby of mine is not about how quickly I can produce crafty output, it really does feel good, almost triumphant, to say ‘I’m finished!’.

This bag was a lot of fun to make and I’m incredibly pleased with the result. One of the things I liked the most about it was how unfussy it was – the design is asymmetric so it didn’t matter when my stitching became a bit… asymmetric. I also liked that the fabric was thick enough that I didn’t need my embroidery hoop. Even though using an embroidery hoop isn’t that much of a hassle, it was still nice to have one less thing to worry about when working on the bag.

I also liked taking photos of it as I finished with each colour. In my last post, I posted a photo after finishing all the dark brown sections. Here it is after completing the mid brown sections:

And with the light brown sections completed:

I love how striking the wolf is. Matt thought that it looked a little scary, but I can’t stop looking at it. In fact, I’m considering doing all over again but in a wall hanging. Let’s call it a potential rebound project.

The only area of concern for me was the amount of floss included in the kit. I had plenty of light and dark brown floss left, but I used every last skerrick of the mid brown. This was good from the perspective of using everything up, but not so good for my poor risk-averse nerves. If I had come up short, I would have been trying to find the same dye lot. Given that the kit came from the UK and I’m in Australia, I suspect I would have been out of luck. It’s entirely possible that I lost some floss along the way, but it did cause me some slight heartburn as I neared the end of the floss.

Now that it’s finished, I’m a little sad I won’t be working on it again. Hence, the consideration of the rebound project. If you’re in the market for an easy but slightly hypnotic embroidery project, this one is definitely worth considering.