A Three Generation UFO

Every sewer and stitcher has UFOs...those unfinished objects lying around, stuck into closets, packed into drawers, pushed who-knows-where. I have one of those cardboard file boxes from the big box office store that's filled with UFOs. I do try to complete a few each year, usually in the winter months, when we've got cold, wet weather. It's so nice to sit and stitch in front of a roaring fire, thinking smugly that I'm whittling down those projects! But then I add new projects....it's a never-ending cycle.

I had one that involved three generations.....I finally decided to get it out from it's hanging bag and start on it this last winter. I admit I had really put it off for way too long....more than 10 years and I was beginning to feel guilty about it.

Back track to 2001. My mother had just passed away and I inherited all of her sewing stuff including "The Project". She apparently had purchased beautiful matching painted needlepoint canvases for a purse and stitched a lot of it using stranded cotton embroidery floss in really pretty colors: pink, blues, yellow, greens, camel, black. But I guess she had made or found some mistakes and tried to get them out, accidentally cutting the canvas is several places. I found the bag with the canvases stuffed into it, along with floss and needles, and a list of the colors she had chosen, in a chest of drawers.

When my husband and I got everything home and settled in our house I told our daughter about the needlepoint canvas. She said she would take it home with her the next time she visited and try to repair it and finish the canvas. Now she's not really a stitcher, but took it home anyway, matched and bought more DMC floss. In her spare time she repaired and finished the needlepoint. She did a wonderful job!!!

So the completed canvases came back to me. I talked with Linda of Ghee's at a Martha Pullen event soon after. I returned home with a purse frame, pattern, chain and some black ultrasuede. I put it all in a bag and promptly hung it up in the closet and let it alone until this year. Why? I was a little nervous about starting the project because I would have to re-design the pattern to fit the canvas shape. The canvas was sort of a shell shape, and the pattern was a rectangle.

I made a command decision not to block the canvases because I wasn't sure what my Mom may have repaired on her own before giving up on the project. I figured the purse wouldn't be used that much so I really didn't want to take the risk and the canvas was on grain. I designed a side/bottom piece (lower pattern piece in the photo that was cut on the fold) that would go from one side and around to the other to give enough extra width at the top and more room in the purse body (top pattern piece).

I made a 'muslin' up out of some old fabric to test the fit of both pieces, especially the fit for the frame. I figured out how to make piping in ultrasuede to insert between the side/bottom piece and the canvas (you don't have to cut the ultrasuede on the bias). And I really hesitated when I trimmed the canvas away from the needlepoint (except for a half inch seam allowance). I'd never used a straight hex-open frame before (or any frame for that matter). See how nicely the frame open ups? Inside are two pockets, too.

But I kept sewing and designing. It took two full days of careful work to turn this almost forgotten Unfinished Object into the unique purse it is now.

Well worth the work and I can't help but think my Mom is rather proud of it too! How is your UFO stash? Do you have any unusual UFO stories?