Home-made goods

We've been blessed with a lovely warm sunny day, after fog in the early morning.  N needed no encouragement at all to clean the greenhouse out.  All the staging, pots and containers were strewn around the garden, and he set to with brush and disinfectant, cleaning the glass, frame and base.  It certainly looks a good deal brighter!  He's also had a go at taking geranium cuttings from the plants we over-wintered, and hopefully they will strike and produce some new plants.

It's just so good to be outside again.  Gradually the ground is drying out, and we can begin to think about repairing the pathways and replacing the one or two pieces of rotten timber in the decking and edging.  Then there's the shed which is now straining at the seams with all the bits and pieces that seem to have found a home within it's walls.  Yes, I think a decluttering session is overdue there!

I've been busy working my way through the bag of 'rags' we bought at the donation centre a couple of weeks ago.  The towels have all been washed and cut up for garden cloths, so I had a great session zig-zagging the edges to reduce the cut pile going everywhere.  It's produced two bags full of rags which will be very useful in the shed and garden.  I also have a pile of items to be unpicked and hopefully re-used for clothes or linens at a later date.

One of the projects on my 'to do' list has been making some muslin produce bags, similar to these.  I thought it was a really good idea, one which I definitely wanted to have a go at and quite simple to make. 

For some reason it was on my list for a very long time - I just never quite got around to making them - but having returned from our break, I just got stuck in to the project and now have a selection of different-sized net bags I can use when I purchase loose produce.  I haven't had opportunity to try them out yet, but I'll report back when I do.

And finally, I needed to come up with a birthday present very quickly last week (forward planning and preparation has not been my forte recently =:o) and just in the nick of time found inspiration from my fat quarter stash.  This piece of fabric printed with wine bottles was the starting point for a handy bottle carrier in which I tucked four bottles of Island real ale from Goddards Brewery.

A bit of last minute hemming and finishing off on the cross-Solent ferry

As is so often the case, I just started cutting fabric and hoped it would all come together as it went along.  I interfaced the whole bag to make it a bit sturdier, and used some bottle-green fabric (sorry, pun not intended!) as a contrast and also because I didn't have enough of the patterned fabric ;-).  The tricky bit was constructing the interior partitions (to prevent the bottles from bashing against each other in transit) but after a bit of head-scratching, even that eventually came together.  I was really pleased with the finished result.  It made me think about home-made/hand-made gifts.  I know how much of my time went into crafting the item, the thought process required to see the idea through to fruition and the care I took to ensure that it was well-made and to the best of my ability.  It wasn't mass-produced for profit.  It wasn't one of hundreds of identical items in a store or on the internet, available at the click of a button.  It was made with care, thought and a little bit of skill and I hope it was appreciated.