How a bag is made

All the bags for sale at luckyladybirdcraft.co.uk are handmade by me from fleece, felt and oilcloth. But how, you may well ask? Here's a quick guide to my bag-making process.

I work from my own book of templates which I put together as I design the bags. In this first picture you can see me drawing around the template for my chocolate swiss roll shoulder bag on to the back of the oilcloth that I use as a sturdy lining for all my cake bags.

Once the two sides are cut to shape I add pockets, also in oilcloth. Here's me with my trusty sewing machine fixing the pockets in place.

Oh sewing machine, I love you really.

Next I cut out the sides, one long strip for the bottom of the bag and a shorter zip section. Again I use the machine to stitch the zip into place.

The two outer strips are sewn end-to end to make a tube and then I pin the round side pieces into place. Believe it or not I then hand sew around the circular edge of the lining to finish this stage. I find the sewing machine just can't handle the tight corners the way a needle and thread can!

Once the lining is finished I start work on the decorative outer. Back to my templates and here I am cutting the 'cream' for the swiss roll from fleece.

Likewise I cut a spiral of fleece for the chocolate cake element of the bag. This is then carefully pinned into place and the two layers are hand sewn together.

 

This particular design features pieces of strawberry in the fresh cream. These are small squares of red fleece, hand sewn onto the outer.

As with the lining the outer of the bag is composed of two sides, a long strip for the bottom and a smaller zip section. Once the decoration has been finished these four panels are sewn together. Most of this I'm able to do on the sewing machine.

Outer and inner complete the two can be brought together. Here you can see the inner being slotted inside the outer.

 Inner and outer are then pinned and hand sewn together leaving a (hopefully) neat join at the zip.

But the bag's not finished yet, it still needs handles. These are made from pink webbing lined with a strip of polka-dot oilcloth to match the bag interior. I cut these to measure and sew them together to make a strong handle.

Finally no Lucky Ladybird bag would be complete without the finishing touch of a beaded strawberry zip-pull. These are made from red felt and white glass seed-beads. The size of the strawberry depends on the size of the bag, but whatever the design each strawberry is hand sewn by me. Beading complete the felt is sewn together and stuffed with polyester fibre stuffing.

And, at long last, the bag is complete.

A bag like this takes about a day and a half to complete, or around 13 hours in total. You can find this bag and more like it for sale at the Lucky Ladybird shop.

If you have any comments or questions about my materials or methods you can leave a comment here or email me at info@luckyladybirdcraft.co.uk

LLxx

On a roll!

The past few weeks have been some of the busiest times of my life, in craft terms. I've been spreading myself thin trying to create a range of items of different items of different sizes and I've also been photographing them and building the new website to house the listings. Website design is not something I've ever done before but thanks to some very useful software courtesy of my Dad and some fantastic friends who have experience in the area it's been a lot more painless than I would have imagined.
So what do I have to show for my many hours of devotion? Well firstly there's the Swiss Roll Collection. From the mini to the maximum cute, bag charms, mini roll purses, coin purses and  handbags.

Next there's the Battenberg Collection. Battenberg shoulder bags, coin purses and bag charms.

 And not forgetting my favourite, the Battenberg handbag. Actual slice of cake not for sale, I had to eat it all!

And for anyone looking for a savoury option there's also plenty of sushi to chose from in the Sushi Collection. 

All these bags and accessories are now available to buy through the new Lucky Ladybird Shop which went live yesterday. The site's still new so if you experience any problems with it or notice any mistakes please get in touch and I'll get on it. Just email me at info@luckyladybirdcraft.co.uk

Being the Lucky Ladybird full time is my new job and, although it's been busy it's also been a lot of fun dreaming up new designs and honing my skills. Listening to the radio and putting the last few stitches into a handbag yesterday I took a moment to relish how much I enjoy sewing, and I hope some of that joy will show in the final products.

There will be more from me soon including a step-by-step 'how a bag is made' post, but in the mean time take a look around www.luckyladybirdcraft.co.uk and let me know what you think. Good luck, and enjoy your crafts,

LL xx

A New Look

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the Lucky Ladybird blog has a new look complete with hand-sewn banner and a pretty pink colour scheme. But it's more than just a spring clean, all the Lucky Ladybird sites including the Twitter and Facebook pages have been restyled to match the new website that went live today.

luckyladybirdcraft.co.uk is still in development but will soon include a shop selling all my new products (and some of my old products too) as well as plenty of info about me and how I work. But don't worry, the blog will stay where it is for the foreseeable future.
If there's anything else you'd like to see included in the new website then let me know. The new couple of months are going to be very busy while I get things up and running, but I hope to be back with more tutorials very soon. Until then stay lucky,

LL xx

New designs, the first sneak peak!

I've kept you all waiting long enough, the time has come for you to see my new range of bags and purses! From now on I'm going to be concentrating on my new range of cake themed bags. Here is the first teaser image.

The range will include unique Battenburg bags as well as Swiss Roll handbags, purses and bag charms in a range of colours and flavours.


If you're a regular reader and/or customer and would like to help me on my way to making the cake bags a reality please take complete my online survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/28MHMMB

It should only take a few minutes, there are only 7 questions, so please fill it out. It also includes a few more images to get your mouths watering. All feedback will be used to price the bags fairly and sell them in the way that's most convenient for you.

Check out the Facebook page for regular updates about the new range or email me at luckyladybirdcraft@gmail.com if you have any comments or suggestions that just wouldn't fit into the boxes of the survey. 

Thank you all so much for your help and responses!

LL xx

The Times They Are A'Changin

It's all change for me at the moment. After looking for jobs since I moved back to the Midlands in September I'm finally decided to make my own job and become full time self-employed. I've been taking plenty of advice from family and friends, have signed up with the enterprise allowance scheme (who should be providing me with a mentor and some training) and if all goes to plan I should be trading under my own name in eight weeks time.

I'm very excited to be starting something new. I've designed a new range of bags and purses and am currently sourcing materials. I'll put up photos as soon as I've made the prototypes and I'll ask for lots of feedback! I'm also working on a new central website with a cute and crafty design. I'm planning on keeping this blospot address for the convenience of all my followers, but the layout of this blog will be getting a makeover soon so it fits in with the website. While all this is going on I've had to suspend my shop on etsy. Sales are always pretty slow at this time of year anyway, so hopefully not too many people will be inconvenienced.

Thank you to everyone who has been supportive and enthusiastic about my decision, I'll bring you more news very soon!

LL xx

More Cassiopeia Craft

For those of you who enjoyed my tutorial on fox-face placemats you might be interested to read my article in the latest issue of Cassiopeia Magazine 'From Junk to Joy' on plastic fusing.

It's a beautiful issue with lots of creative writing, recipes and reviews too, so I recommend reading more than just the craft section!
Happy reading, LL x

Creative Pay-It-Forward

At the beginning of January an interesting meme seemed to be spreading rapidly across Facebook. It went something like this:

"2013 Creative Pay-It-Forward: The first five people to comment on this status will receive from me, sometime in the next calendar year, a gift! Made by me! Said gift may be written, drawn, baked or some combination thereof. There will likely be no warning and it will happen whenever the mood strikes me. The catch? Those five people must make the same offer in their FB status"

I don't normally share memes, but this one seemed like a great opportunity to make some little presents for my friends and to share my crafting with people who weren't customers. I shared it and got four responses, but like a lot of people I then had to think for a while about what I would make. Two of the people who took up the offer were living overseas (one in the US, one in France) so I decided it would have to be something fairly small to cut down on shipping costs. The text I'd posted said it would be something "written, drawn, baked or some combination thereof" but would anyone mind if I sewed something? I decided it wouldn't be cheating, not really, and set to work on some tiny Lucky Ladybird charms.

One of my friends loved my salmon roe coin purse, so I decided to make him a smiley keyring that would remind him of it.

Not everyone loves sushi as much as I do, I'm clear on that, but something everyone does love is a biscuit or a cookie!

Jammie Dodger and Bourbon Biscuits for friends in the UK, Oreo cookie for my friend in America. These guys were a lot of fun to make, if a little fiddly. The Oreo in particular took a long time to embroider!

While the meme was spreading I signed up to be the recipient of a couple of gifts too, so some time in 2013 I should be receiving some interesting handmade items in return. I can't wait!

Did anyone else sign up for Creative Pay-It-Forward? What did you give, what did you receive?
It's still early in the year, so there's still time to share the meme if you like the idea.

Have fun, stay lucky

LL xx