Goldfish bag
I’m working on the Goldfish from Kumiko Sudo’s book Omiyagi. I started on it sometime last night and for some reason the fact that I have a camera totally escaped me, so while there aren’t the intimate details, I have a few somewhat in progress pictures to share.
I am doing all of the sewing by hand, not that machine sewing is wrong; it’s just that spinning has really changed my perspective on the value of the time and effort involved.
Production sewing really sucked the joy out of my life. It wasn’t limited to just killing the joy of sewing and crafting, but left me feeling completely hopeless at times. It took quite a while for me to feel really creative after I left the industry, and everytime I pick up a needle and thread now, I feel like I’m reclaiming a little part of myself. I guess that’s why I truly feel like learning to spin and knit has saved me from a padded room, because without the creative outlet I’d be completely lost.
I haven’t done the lining or the eyes yet, since I haven’t really decided if I want to use felt as the book suggests or if I want to try making bead eyes. I think this is another one of those projects where I might want to make more than one, it’s just turning out so cute. I see potential here, it wouldn’t be difficult at all to adapt this to make a clown fish or with the right textured fabric– a puffer fish. Puffer fish are pretty cool too.
This time I’m going to try to not get ahead of myself and just the gold fish through to the end (although that won’t keep me from staring at fabric longingly and drooling just a little.)