This bag has probably travelled more miles than me, seen some pretty strange places and travelled the high seas. It landed in my Recycled Gallery studio this week and with a bit of love has been given a whole new lease on life.
This is just part of the story, where it goes from here....well I may never know. For now it is going to keep on travelling. I have put this little foot stool out in the shop so it can find a new home.
Working With Coffee Sacks - Crafty Tips (learnt the hard way)
I love working with coffee sacks in my designs. The bold inky black font and bright colours matched with earthy hessian is just my kind of raw style. I have been working with hessian coffee sacks for years now, so here is a few quick tips for those new to this up-cycling coffee sack fun:-
- Don't wash them. The ink fades and the crispness is lost. Instead, dust them out, hang the bag in the sunshine for a few hours and then iron (hot with full steam).
- Clean your sewing machine after use. Hessian is fibrous and gets everywhere.
- Hessian is mercilous and should be cut with a heavy duty pair of scissors not your good sewing ones.
- If stitching together hessian, iron flat every seam to avoid too much bulk.
- Don't pair the hessian with thick fabric as this will be too thick for a domestic sewing machine to handle.
- Make sure you zig zag the edges of the hessian to avoid the seam fraying. Hessian is a loose weave and a single line of stitching may not hold.
Until next time,
xx Isabella
