One of a kind

I was asked for one of my photo bags for a Christmas present.  It was to show my cat - to start with to show him awake but then it was to show him asleep and instead of being landscape it needed to be in portrait format.

I thought about the design of this bag for quite a while.  The picture was the easy part.  A picture of young Bruce asleep and dreaming, that way we could have the best of both worlds.  It also gave me a chance to put lots of butterflies and dragonflies on the bag (for Bruce to be dreaming about - he likes to chase them).

The portrait format was harder because I didn't feel that it would give enough room in the bag to make it practical.  My solution was to make laminated panels for each end of the bag using THE JAYNE NETLEY MAYHEW COLLECTION from Joanna Sheen.  There are lots of big cat patterned backing papers on the cd roms that were perfect I chose a leopard print one.

Now the big issue was whether I had managed to over complicate the design and to be honest I didn't really want to start it in case things went badly .........I did a lot of the final construction on Boxing Day morning knowing that it had to be done so I could deliver it that afternoon.

Over sewing the panels together with a zigzag stitch turned out to be a bit easier than I had imagined and the black lace trim on the bag and braided into the handles gave it a nice finish.  

It could be truely one of a kind as I am not at all sure I want to make another one not even for myself.

let sleeping cats lay