Bag Exchange for Usha & Motif No. 20 - Hearts. Catch the Flowers and Latest Book!

I have wanted to make the dorset bag long time ago, but just couldn’t bring myself to sew it; hand-sew that is, as I don’t know how to use the sewing machine. So for this Bag Exchange, I think it was the perfect occasion to “force” myself to make it. Did some shopping before I found some beautiful thick napkins, the hems all done to save some sewing. Before I knew it, I had been sewing for weeks and I did poked the needle into my fingers a few times; I was so glad it was finally done. I also hand-stitched the pin cushion and attached a bought machine-tatted simple edging. All these went to Usha, hope she won't find my stitching too untidy.

The past week was Chinese New Year. Besides visiting relatives, we went to Sentosa for a flower exhibition. It was pretty crowded and hot, so we didn't walked too far, but these were some shots we took.

These sculptures were made up of fresh flowers!

Despite the holidays, I didn't get much tatting done, partly because I'm still trying more ideas for the paper clips. Actually, I'm only about halfway to the target, I hope I won't disappoint Georgia and participants in the Online Tatting Class. That aside, I finished up the thread on the shuttle and ended up with this tiny heart bookmark! I decided to count all the paperclips as part of my 25 Motif Challenge, so this and the other heart paperclips will be Motif No. 20.

And look, my 11th Japanese book! Author is Sumi Fujishige, I believe this is her latest tatting book printed a few months ago.

I haven't tried anything inside, only flipped through it, so here's just a summary of what's inside:

Simple 5-ring flowers are used to make up bouquets (like on the cover above) and wreath, and to decorate bags and linen coasters, and even to encase beads to turn them into accessories. There are more accessories in the form of flower brooches and Christmas wreath brooch in the book. There are also 4 bookmarks, a number of small motifs of vegetables, and motifs to decorate acrylic coasters, bag and pouch. As usual, there are doilies and edgings, including edgings to decorate linen doilies, sachet, tissue box cover, lampshade and also a stole. Although the set of ring-only numbers looks pretty hard to hold their shapes, mounting them would do the trick, especially on a clock! Typical of Japanese books, texts are in Japanese but with clear diagrams, and as usual, the book is filled with an assortment of patterns for everything, and with bright and colourful presentation of the finished works.