A little experimenting

I've been a busy bee, stitching away on my golf-shoe bag project for over a week now, and we have made great progress. Woo-hoo! The client saw the first completed bag yesterday, and loves it... another woo-hoo!

Meanwhile, I saw this blog post awhile back: http://elizabethcreates.blogspot.com/2009/04/reuse-restyle-repurpose-create.html

I especially liked this pattern:

This is a pattern I have been crazy about for a long time, but never figured out how to create it. Elizabeth talked about how she created her samples, and based on her description, I tried two versions: first accordion folding the fabric, then sewing a running stitch across the folds; the other version, I sewed a series of rows of running stitches, then gathered them up and tied off. Here are the results:

As you can see, neither experiment came close to replicating the pattern. I found a website that gives a little more information here, and have another experiment batching that might come a little closer. I sacraficed one of my hubby's old t-shirts and cut out a square of it to use, since I really want to do this pattern on t-shirts. We'll see...

Meanwhile, I ordered a book on shibori which was recommended to me by someone on my dyer's forum... can't wait to get into it!