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Wednesday 5 June 2013

A work in progress

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced today, and have a WIP to show you. Slowly but surely, I'm falling in love with Shashiko, so I thought I'd make a little bag on which to try out my still shaky skills.

A seventeenth century gaming purse.
A depiction of a treasure bag.

The style is based on a seventeenth century gaming purse, but it reminds me of a Japanese treasure bag too–truly a case of East meeting West.



For the base, I've used a little of the heavy blue cotton I had left over from my fisherman's smock, while the body is made from one of Patrick's old linen shirts. But it is the lining I love best–a beautiful piece of cream, lilac and ruby silk that was once a kimono sleeve. As for the Shashiko, I've kept it simple–a hemp leaf on the base, and a band of crosses on the body.

Let's just hope those much too vigorously applied chalk marks eventually disappear!

Elizabeth,
x.

1 comment:

  1. Looking good!
    I have a book on Sweet Bags (by Jacqui Carey) and it is full of inspiration for these highly decorative bags.
    The Japanese 'shifuku', a bag for storing the tea caddy in tea ceremony must also be a source of inspiration for the bag craze you see in Japanese quilt magazines.
    Your bag will be just as lovely!
    http://japanese-tea-ceremony.net/utensils.html if you want to read more

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