Weekend with my Nan – Denman College – Part 1

9th July 2014

A few weekends ago, I went to the WI teaching college with my Nan. I know, I know, it sounds heinous but it was actually quite fun! and it was good to have some nanny time. The course we chose was 101 things to do with a Duvet. Random, yes! but there weren’t that many left before August when the baby was due and actually of all the course that ran that weekend I am glad we chose the one we did. The course ran all weekend long and we stayed over in one of the cottages in the grounds of the big house. Here is a picture of the Main House.

We learnt lots of things and I even came home with a finished item at the end of the weekend! We learnt how to make a rag rug, how to prod and hook, how to use a peg loom and how to knit with fabric (Except I can’t knit so I crocheted instead!).

The item I came home with was a lavender bag. I thought this might be quite nice to go in the baby’s cot to help her sleep. I’m not sure if it’ll match the bedding though so we shall see. The prodding was the most straight forward technique to master. The hessian bags had been pre made already and all we had to do was cut out fabric strips 3 inches by 5/8 inch(Its old school, WI, no metric here!). We then used our wooden prodder, this looked a bit like a pencil but with no nib, to push each end of our fabric strip through the hessian. We prodded the strips in a completely random pattern.

Said prodder

lavender bag in the making…

Once we had filled with one colour we went back through filling in the gaps with a second colour. You prod from the back so when we had finished prodding both colours and there were no more gaps we turned our bag the right way round our little cushion looked like this. I then inserted my lavender bag, these were supplied by the tutor, stuffed the cushion with leftover fabric scraps and sewed up the side seam.

Here is my finished lavender bag/mini cushion.