Sarahlongworth’s Weblog

I haven’t been here in a while so here is a brief update of where I have been and what I have been doing.

First of all I graduated! From my short 8 week course in leather accessory design that is. The course was really good. The first few weeks covered all the basic stuff like pattern making and cutting, a little frustrating as that’s all stuff I’ve been doing for a while now anyway and all I really wanted was to be let loose on the big dangerous sewing machines. But it was good to cover all that stuff and see how basic small accessories are constructed. The last 4 sessions we were allowed to develop our own project. As I’ve been doing fabric wallets and small bags for a while now I opted for something I’d never attempted before…a belt.

And here is the result.

The leather I used to make it is really really thick so when you wear it you are seriously held in tightly! I think there may be a fair amount of victorian-lady-style fainting going on with this one, so when I get around to making some more up at home I will be using some thinner leather and a little more elastic

I went back home at Easter and went to Manchester one day to see my bags on display in the Royal Exchange craft shop. You can read about the craft shop here and a bit more about me and the other designers in the exhibit here.

I took some sneaky pictures too.

This is the theatre foyer

At the moment I’m working on some new projects which I’m hoping will be finished over the next month or so. I now have a couple of days a week off from the office job so I can concentrate on doing all the things I could never find time to do before, or could only ever do in a rush in my lunch hour, like making calls, buying fabrics, starting new stuff. So Im excited and also a little scared too