Lesley planning Button swop

I have all of my lovely fabrics, buttons, beads etc in my sewing room. I will work in here when I am making my project and maybe sometimes take the work down to the conservatory for some extra daylight especially if I am hand sewing. I have more or less decide what I'm going to make and how all of the contributions will come together.

For some reason I was unable put both words and a picture on my post.
So here goes, hopefully it will work if I do them seperately!
The theme of insects opened up so many possibilities, but I had suggested it in the first place because I saw a magazine article about someone who had embroidered a book cover inspired by insects. I copied a few and thought the moth looked the best, after that I very quickly decided a rucksack was the way to go.
I always use a small rucksack when I am travelling and I like to have a pocket for valuables against my back,  on the inside. Your zip was perfect for this Louisa. I used Ruths elastic and tape to create a frame for the edges of both the rucksack and the outside pocket. Kathy, your purple wool made delightful little ladybirds and I used my red heart ribbon both as a zip pull and as inside pocket edging. I have since lined the inside to protect the back of the embroidery from getting snagged, for this I recycled  a butterfly print scarf to compliment the theme.
Hopefully I will post more pics of the inside if Joe pops round and can help, this is the first time I have done a post on my own! and not really sure what I'm doing!!!
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insect swop project

Insect Swap - Ruth

Like Louisa, I too explored the idea of a pupae, but mine was meant to unzip to reveal a dragonfly. In the end I added a much larger zip which opens to reveal a shopping bag. The dragonfly decorates the outside of the bag which I made in colours of a dragonfly's watery environment. The printed strip is a piece I printed at a workshop Lesley and I attended together in Leeds a couple of years ago. I liked the way it encorporated the greens and blues with a touch of red to tie into Lesley's ribbon.

I was keen to use this project to explore the shapes and patterns of dragonflies' lacy wings. The most fun part of the project was machine stitching the black lines on the teal background. I traced the pattern onto thin iron-on vilene which I adhered to the back of the fabric. I did the sewing from that side so I could follow the lines. In the body of the dragonfly I couched down tiny pieces of all the contributions with machine stitching (including chunks of Louisa's zip). I found two faceted black button "insect eyes" to finish it off.

The big problem of this bag is that the fabric is soft and billowy and the zip is very large scale. I can't zip or unzip without constantly catching the fabric in the teeth ... so it is waiting in the sewing basket for a simple renovation. I will apply the dragonfly zipped pocket to a bag made of sturdier fabric and the original bag will get a simple pouch or a velcro strip to fasten it.

Kathy's insect swop

I loved the insect theme, so many possibilities. Decided to use a previous unfinished embroidery project as the starting point, and it gradually morphed into a sunflower. The French knots include Lesley's red ribbon, Ruth's black ribbon, my purple yarn, and a rainbow of other colours meant to show the circle of the seasons.The backing is a loose-weave dishcloth (new) which I found in a charity shop in Oxford four years ago on our last get-together! It was so soft and worked well for French knots, even allowing the ribbon to pull through the open weave.

Some fabric bits in my stash, with dragonflies, ladybugs and butterflies worked for the insect theme. They ended up on the petals around the embroidered centre.

The orange zipper from Louisa is tucked along the edge of the curved stem, adding a bit of texture, like a real sunflower stem. The leaves are African fabric, a bit wild. Our front door needed a summery decoration, and the peephole shows through the hole in the centre.

Insect swap -- Louisa

Insects!  This opened up a lot of possibilities, and since I already had a good collection of fabrics featuring butterflies I thought my solution was going to be obvious -- a butterfly quilt!  Possibly a "bug jar" quilt -- always wanted to make one and now I had a great reason to do it.

I drew up some patterns, but hesitated.  Did I really want to make something big that I would need to transport across the ocean?  And besides, there was already a quilt claiming space in my suitcase!

Thought about it some more.

All these items needed to be included in the project.  Who on earth would have included a zipper in the mix!?

As I was trying to figure out the zipper part of the project Luke pointed out that a zipper suggests an opening of some kind.  We played with that thought a bit and come up with the idea of a pouch. 

         

  Maybe a chrysalis shape?

The outside of the pouch was made with fabric that Ruth gave me.  The design was printed with sunlight -- is that called cyanotype?   I thought it looked quite "chrysalis-y".  I added a light brown organza overlay, couching it in place using the purple yarn from Kathy (and a bit of a gold cord from a previous swap.)

The zipper was inserted by hand because it was hard to get the machine around the fairly tight curves.  Zipper pull tab uses Lesley's red and white ribbon.

And when the chrysalis opens up -- 

The butterfly was mostly machine stitched.  I used Ruth's black trim to make the body.  Original plan was to add some dots to the wings with buttons and crocheted flowers (purple yarn), but this hasn't happened, and I think the pouch might be more useful without embellishments on the inside.