Craft fair and Morsbags

Well, my posts are getting more regular. What have I been doing in the last 2 weeks?

I did a craft fair with my daughter Sarah, down in London. It was a nice venue, a community gardens, it was well organised, lots of nice stalls , but there were very few buyers. The weather wasn't that bad, so we concluded it was the fact that the area wasn't very wealthy. We only sold 2 of Sarah's bags, a jeans bag and a vintage fabric knitting bag with wood effect round handles, 2 pairs of oven gloves and a felt brooch I had made about 10 minutes before it sold. We kept ourselves amused with hand sewing while we chatted and we had quite a nice day.

Thursday the 26th August our local Morsbag pod - LIT bags had a meeting in the evening. They will be holding that monthly. I cut the hems and tops off the donated curtains which needs doing before they can be made into bags. Morsbags are a charity which makes cloth shopping bags which are then handed out on the street and swapped for plastic carrier bags. The fabric and thread are all donated, mostly curtains and bedlinen. The volunteers make the bags. They also go to fetes and fairs with hand crank and treadle sewing machines and get the public to make their own bags.

I was talking to Rosie from Morsbags about the felt needles Sarah and I bought at the Weaving Studio in North London. She said she had an embellisher (a machine which felts and attaches wool or ribbon, etc to fabric, using a five needle unit attached in the same way as a normal sewing machine needle but with no thread or bobbin), and she didn't use it any more but would be willing to swap it for a treadle.

So we made a deal and I am now restoring a treadle for her. I am even repainting the irons as this was stored somewhere damp and the woodwork and metal have both suffered. The woodwork has to be stripped right back , bleached to remove black marks, sanded, restained and repolished. The irons will be wire brushed, cleaned, derusted and repainted gloss black with gold on the Singer logos on the centre and either leg. The orignal machine was a Singer 27 with Sphinx decals but that is very worn so I will be dropping either a 15, 66 or 201 into the table. Rosie will need the extra yardage of thread on the round bobbins for making the Morsbags.

You can look them up at www.morsbags.com. They are pretty much worldwide now.

That's about it for today, we were up very late last night as we went down to see Sarah in London and the car broke down so we didn't get to bed until 4am. Although we slept in a bit, I am still very tired.