Taking inspiration from a child's painting

I received this thank you card from two sisters, the oldest of whom is 3.

Their mum is a fellow crafter who is into felting and I thought it would be nice to make something for the youngest's 2nd birthday using the card design. What could I make? I decided on making a bag that she could play with at home, putting small toys or a book in.







I love using my embellisher and had some red felt in my stash that I could use for the base. I've bought so much stuff over the years that I don't feel guilty not paying out more money for new supplies for presents as I have already paid for the stuff in my cupboards. Included in my stash are lots of fat quarters from my patchwork/quilting/applique period and so I chose reds, blues and bright greens. After cutting small pieces of the chosen fabrics I laid them onto the base felt, added a few merino felt fibres to soften the edges and then used my embellisher to 'mesh' them together.
To help keep them in place I used various automatic stitches on my sewing machine in matching colours, sewing in lines. Next I freemachined circles and lines in an off-white to emulate the wax resist lines in the original picture.






Using some more red felt as a lining and for the handle I made the piece into a bag. Aware that this bag is for a child under 3 I was concerned that it may be possible to pick at the merino fibres and pull some off so I coated the bag with some acrylic wax which glued them in place and also it also makes the bag more durable. I was really chuffed with how the bag turned out and wondered if it was too good to give a two-year old. Possibly one of the youngest children to have a designer bag!