I used to have a friend in college who asked me to make him ugly mittens to match the ugly scarf his mom had given him. It was the most hysterical and difficult thing I did. It's hard to purposefully make something ugly when I usually do everything I can to avoid that. And I wasn't sure if he wanted hideously ugly or just not very pretty. I made them hideous. He loved them. That worked out. He later commissioned a hat of the same variety. Also hideous. I learned to let go of my need for everything to always be esthetically pleasing.
Bringing me to my clothespin bag. We line dry everything and desperately needed a bag in which to carry our clothespins. I didn't like the ones that hung on the line because I'd have to drag it along the line as I pinned things up. I didn't plan on keeping it on the line in between dryings since I didn't want it getting rained on. I ended up just making a basic bag shape and then put straps closer to each other on one side than on the other to tie around my waist, making the opening fall open away from me so it would be easier to get my hand in and out.
The bag is made from 2 9-patch squares I made over 5 years ago with random fabric I had at the time. I had 2, so I decided to use one for each side of the bag, but I didn't really like all the fabric and I didn't like how they were arranged. I just wanted to use them up. I ended up doing a disappearing 9 patch on it first. Then I did the disappearing 4 patch technique on it, mixing up the pieces from both sides until I liked the arrangement better. (I still don't love it as a beautiful thing, but I like it better than what I started with.) I then used some fun palm tree fabric (again, stuff I wanted to get rid of) as the bottom and sides to make it big enough to house all my pins. I lined it with some greenish/purple floral fabric (again, get it out of my stash!) and made the handles out of the same material as the lining. Sewed the handles on and BAM! Clothespin bag.
It works just great. Do I think it's beautiful? No. Do I love it's function? Yes. Will I redo it? Probably not until this one falls apart, so not for a while. There you go. I let go of perfect beauty for the purpose of function and clearing out fabric. I feel good about that. Yay for line drying!
See you soon!
(I've been doing better at keeping this promise lately!)
