East Meets West - Liberty Komebukuro Bag

Over the last couple of posts I've shared pics of a work in progress.  This project started a while back when Ali offered some of her beautiful Liberty fabric to anyone who would like to try out a particular idea, and I wrote asking for a Maxi Scrap Pack.  I'd been thinking for a while about a bag I wanted to make, and here it is!  (Sorry for the picture heavy post.)

My bag was inspired by an interest in Japanese textiles and embroidery (a shout-out to Cynthia who fuelled this interest with her fascinating posts from Japan).

In particular I'm interested in boro and its relationship to English crazy patchwork in the way they both aim to use scraps of fabric to make a larger piece of usable cloth.   Boro fabrics are often stitched using a large sashiko running stitch and English crazy patchwork is often embellished using a variety of decorative stitches.

I thought it would be fun to unite two cultures in a Japanese style komebukuro bag (traditionally used to carry rice) made using English crazy patchwork panels made of Liberty tana lawn.

I used some of the stitches on my new sewing machine to embellish the crazy patchwork, and running stitches in different shades of Perle 8 to quilt the 'sashing' which was made with Essex Yarn Dyed Linen.  Each side has a different colour of quilting (thanks commenters on my last post:-)

It has a cotton lining made using some Dorothy from the Liberty Bloomsbury range, which I was lucky to get in my Stitch Gathering goodie bag.

I didn't want to use it all, so I supplemented part of it with some plain cotton at the bottom.

The tabs are made of red grosgrain ribbon.

A piece of yellow ribbon pulls the tabs together.

I had difficulty photographing it in a way that does it justice and wish I had finished it at the weekend where the jewel-like colours of the Liberty would have looked lovely in this setting!

Thanks to my local B&B for the use of their garden instead:-)  Passers by on their way to the bus stop must have wondered what the idiot lying on the patio was doing.

I'm really happy with this bag and I think the Liberty goes beautifully with linen but it also teams up well with Klona, or Oakshott and I'm in the middle of making two smaller bags pairing it with different fabrics.

You'll find a tutorial for one way of making a komebukuro bag on the Oakshott website but the process I used was different and I'll post about it, and another alternative method, soon.

Thank you Ali, for the luxury of an opportunity to experiment!