Summer Literary Sewing Circle

Mermaid Purse, 2018

The Summer Literary Sewing Circle, hosted at Following the Thread, focused on the novel The New Moon's Arms which I wrote about over at bibliographic manifestations. For my project I was inspired by the mermaid element of the novel and decided to make a purse with a mermaid theme. I went to the fabric store and found a beautiful blue and teal mermaid fabric and a dark swirly grey. The grey is much more in the tone of the novel, there is a lot of swirling angst in the characters lives, than the mermaid fabric was. However, the mermaid fabric has a magical quality which was definitely part of this novel. I enhanced the magical-sparkly element by adding beads to all the stars on the mermaid fabric on the purse flap and using a fused-glass button that I bought many years ago at a craft festival and had not found a home for until now.

Detail of iridescent beads on stars

The body of the purse is quilted with variegated blue thread in a wave pattern and for the lining I used a pale blue fabric I had leftover from the background of the memorial quilt for my mom. The bag pattern is one I developed and have made many times (including a flowered version). It has 2 pockets inside and one on the back (from the grey fabric). 

I almost made the deadline (which was Friday) on this.

LSC: Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Literary Sewing Circle kicks off at Following the Thread with a reading of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked this Way Comes. 
I have read this novel before (and blogged about it), and am looking forward to rereading it.  
The LSC will be reading and discussing this book, and projects inspired by it, over the next 10 weeks. 
The idea of creating something based on a work of literature seems a bit scary, but I am going to take this quote from the novel as encouragement:

"Too late, I found you can't wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else."

I borrowed a copy of the novel from my public library and have started thinking about what to make. I have been wanting to try a technique I saw (I can't remember where) that took a photo and cut it into pieces then made a quilt by creating each section of the photo and putting them together. That technique using one of the many cool covers for this novel might be a good match. Not committing to this particular project idea yet, but definitely considering it.