The multi-purpose gift for the girl who has everything...

And so another weekend has been and gone, but hey, what's this? I made something! A little make-up purse. Modeled on the one's that I made for the school Mother's Day stall, which I made up out of some of my scraps.

This is the new and improved version. Cotton fabric outer (I cut my precious piece of Denyse Schmidt fabric so I guess now it must be time for some more?), Cotton batting/wading inner, and oilcloth lining. I was originally going to use the pink gingham oilcloth with this fabric, but it was just all wrong. The pinks were just not in the same ballpark. My own fault. But then I noticed that some of the flower centres were almost red and bingo.

First time I have tried to sew with oilcloth and it wasn't so bad. Fine when you are sewing fabric to oilcloth. Oilcloth on oilcloth - ey,yi,yi! It just doesn't feed through. I have read some hints, which I followed up to a point. So next time I will try the masking tape trick. If things are really working well, I may invest in a teflon foot. Although, when all else fails, brute force works wonders when your fabric just won't move through your machine.

The other alteration I had to make was that the oilcloth just didn't want to fold over to make the little edge border on the front, so I resorted to edging with the ribbon. Tricky to start with, but when I worked it out, easy peasy.

Last time I made little ties out of fabric, but turning them back out the right way was driving me nuts. I made 27 purses and the most time consuming part was those ties. I have the stab wounds from the knitting needle to prove it. This time I used ribbon instead, which works just as well. I would really like some grosgrain, so am starting to look around and see what's out there. If anyone can suggest a good retailer/supplier either online or in Melbourne, I would really appreciate it. Spotlight and Lincraft just aren't cutting the mustard.

So there it was, my little make-up purse. I was almost falling in love with it, but alas, I had to give it away. It was a girlfriend's birthday and what girlfriend wouldn't want such a cute little purse? Off I went up the street to give it to her, she unwrapped it (very graciously) and then asked if it was a dishcloth? A dishcloth !!!! I must add that at this point it was facing wrong side up and when she turned it over, she did say "Oh, a little purse!", but I am still recovering. Perhaps if you took your make-up out and you had run out of Chux cloths, I could see that maybe you may think "I could wash my dishes with my make-up purse!".

If anyone knows of a therapy group for people whose sewing endeavours are mistaken for dishcloths, please let me know.

Oh, and my little balloon cards are winging their way to Israel to Julie. Funnily enough, being in Israel and all, she didn't have a big call for the Christmas one's. If anyone would like those, just let me know.