Appleton Dance

by Linda Theil When I saw the brilliant logo of a new local bakery, I knew I wanted to use it to make a charming bag, so I bought one of their promotional tote bags to deconstruct. I unpicked the entire bag because I didn't know how much, if any, of the tote fabric I would want to use in my reconstruction, and I hadn't, yet, chosen a pattern for the re-build. The logo presented something of a challenge because of its six-by eight-inch vertical orientation. I could have cropped the logo to make it more square, but then I would have lost some of the unique content that makes the logo so distinctive and interesting.  I knew Noodlehead's "Sandhill Sling" had a vertical orientation, so I checked the pattern pieces to see if the logo would work with that design. The sling had only one pattern piece that would work with a feature fabric: the 8-inch wide, by 9.5-inch tall zippered pocket bottom on the front of the sling. There are many ways to make a feature-fabric work

 by Alisa I recently saw a social media ad for a Chinese company that sells kits to make DIY leather bags. They send you the leather or vegan leather pieces, and the waxed thread, needles and other items to assemble a version of a popular bag. While I was kind of intrigued by the some of the bags, I decided to start with the DIY version of Hermes' now-discontinued horse charms. I watched a couple YouTube videos on saddle stitching before jumping into the project and found it to be a lot of fun!  After having a great time making the first one I ordered a few more, gathered my faux leather suppliers and setup a kids craft day at Grandma's.  The ten- and 11-year-olds had a great time with the official kit versions and the five-year-old was a wiz at the homemade kit that I cut from vegan leather using the purchased kit as a pattern. You use two-needles on a length of waxed thread to saddle stitch; and they all picked it up so fast! Kid brains are amazing. The success of the craft