Totes, Travel and Tears

This post is one of mixed emotions as our daughter and her very good friend departed Brisbane yesterday morning bound for a six week travel holiday to the United States.  Whilst we are so very happy and proud of them to have worked so hard to save money, showed independence by organising their own itinerary and made all the necessary arrangements themselves, I'm sure it's only natural that as a parent it has torn at the heartstrings to wave them goodbye at the airport and watch them head out into the big wide world on the adventure of a lifetime to fulfil a childhood dream.  Let me tell you that I'm not one that's good with airports or goodbye's at the best of times but the goodbye at the airport yesterday was ... well ... difficult.  With my son's comforting arm around me, I can only hope that people who saw me as we walked back to the car park assumed the reason for my tears and then just as I had some degree of control over myself by the time we arrived to pay for parking at the ticket machine, my daughter sent me a beautiful text from her iPhone - which, of course, only set me going again.  I have no idea how I drove home.

However, a 'little' part of me is travelling with our daughter on this journey.  A few years back when she began her travels around parts of Australia, I stitched a sachet bag for her which she always uses now for underwear and/or stockings to prevent them catching or snagging on other items in her luggage.

This design - Flap the Owl - was one in a range of 'funky' cross stitch kits from DMC which was packed from materials for Leutenegger. With the use of bright, block colours, the design stitched up easily and quickly and was then machine sewn onto contrasting fabric (from my stash) and bordered with bright ribbon to match the drawstring.

Because this idea has proved to be such a success, last weekend our daughter asked me if I would make her and her friend a couple of basic shoe bags (based on the same principle).  However, what she didn't expect was the opportunity this request offered to use my imagination to make something both personal and creative and so I set out by making three bags each using hard wearing fabric - drill and calico - from my stash.

The high heel shoe on the yellow bags were edged in button-hole stitch with contrasting coloured ribbon used for the drawstring according to the colour of the thread used and the 'Bon Voyage' bag was hand stitched using back stitch and red, white and blue filament-threading for the U.S.A. stitching.  The other slightly smaller bags featured the girl's names on each using colours to reflect their personalities and then those same colours used to form a posy of flowers with the lazy daisy stitch for the flowers and stem stitch for the stem.  They will use those particular bags for their flat shoes and sandals.  

It goes without saying that this project proved to be a very happy, pleasurable and rewarding one and the girls were simply overjoyed with them.  We wish them safe travels.

Ros

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page" - Augustine of Hippo