My Pics 2 Picks Project

The Pics 2 Picks Project is the brainchild of Meg in Nelson, NZ.  Here were the basic rules:

1) Collect 3-6 photographs/clipping/drawing to inspire a weaver.

2) Put all three in an envelope, and a personal message and send it to your weaver recipient.

3) Plan a project based on one of the images.

4) Photograph it, sketch it, write about it, or blog about it. And weave it.
5) Share your progress the first week of June.  Completed project not required.

I recieved a little packet from Desiree with a photo, a clipping and some postcards illustrating the wrok of a famous Swedish weaver.  I picked the photo -- it is of a lovely leather jacket by a Swedish clothing designer.  To me it has many of the wonderful colors we see in the American Southwest.

In my stash I had strips of Pendleton Wool fabric and turoquise worms from Pendleton Blankets.  The fabric picks up the colors of the leather and the worms pick up the color in the center (maybe part of the lining).  I also had some hand painted cotton yarn from Lisa Souza that has all the colors.

So I started weaving.  I wasn't sure what the end product would be, but in the back of my mind of was thinking it would be a bag.  You can see in the photo on the left what it looked like on the loom.  I alternated randomly between the worms and the fabric, using a pick of Lisa's cotton in between each.  I have seen garments made using the worms and the worms had been beat hard and made to curl.  I didn't want that -- I wanted flat worms so I beat very lightly -- just kinda sliding them into place.

When I was done I had a piece of fabric that didn't have a lot of stability since the worms were flat.  So my next step was to get a friend (Hi JoAn) to machine quilt it for me.

If you look closely you have see the machine quilting.  That made a huge difference in the stability of the fabric.  Next I washed and dryed it.  There was very little fulling since the worms are the edges of felted blankets.  Then I gave it a hard press and applied fusible interfacing to one side.  From there it is was just sewing -- have I mentioned my sewing skills haven't progressed much since the 7th grade? And my poor sewing machine was not always happy with me or the thickness of the fabric. I had the perfect lining fabic in my stash (photo below on right) and thankfully I had a lot of the fabric since I had to do the lining twice -- the first was a 1/2" too small and I had already trimmed the seam when I discovered that fact. 

I experimented and fussed a lot over the handles.  I tried knitting the worms into an I-Cord handle -- nope.  I tried various plastic and bamboo handles in my stash -- nope.  Finally I went to JoAnns Fabric and found two drapery trims that worked and I sewed them together....

And here's the bag!