so much fun can be had when making surprises!

Fun To Be Had with Stitching Surprises

Tags: bag, embellishment, embroidery, knitting, sewing

I just had to share some of the fun I've been having to celebrate the big birthday. I organized a small knitting retreat as my bestie from the States was coming to visit and I had a lot of fun planning surprises.

There were 7 of us in total and a cook (one of the lady's husbands and master of wool dyeing volunteered) so I had 8 surprises to make.

I knitted up a pair of warm socks (on the sneak) for our cook... and a special tote to put them in with some chocolates of course!

Dye Masters tote to hold hand knitted socks and chocolates

With the special Dye Masters tote complete, I was left to make 7 goodie bags for the rest of us knitters. I made the bags (a new design to be released at a later date) with an embroidery of a special knittery saying and a ball of yarn with needles - this I embroidered onto the pockets before constructing the bags.

Embroidering my own design on a pocket
embroidered pockets with knitting sayings

That took some time as the embroidery designing is rather new to me and quite a learning curve but I hope to transform that into a lesson at some point to add to Free Software for Quilters - it is such an interesting topic and you can learn it all with the free Software I use in this workshop! Do let me know if you're interested.

one of the special knitting project bags made for my mini retreat

I think the most fun was had when I made a false bottom in the bag to hide a box of chocolates!

a look under the false bottom in the project bag - chocolates to be found!

The cords were made using the finger cord technique.

finger cord made for a drawstring in project bag

If you haven't tried it you must. It is so easy. I learned from Charles Gandy who has a youtube video: Finger Cords. I actually taught my granddaughter to make them and she enjoyed it so much that she went around making finger cords out of anything she could find..... thread to thick yarn, string included and pieces as short as a few inches to several meters long.

I also made tissue holders and added other goodies to the project bags.

goodies and tissue holder made for the project bag

Dreamfire yarns donated a sock set especially for the weekend and my friend Sue from the States made everyone a notion bag too.

Dreamfire yarns donated for our weekend retreat
notion bags packed ready to leave the States for our knit retreat in Hanmer

What a fun birthday I had!

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1 comment

My bag has a wip in it and I love all the wee pockets, thankyou Ruth💕 we all had an awesome time

Helen

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