I always struggle with buying Christmas gifts for men, and Mr F is no exception! He's rather fond of a drop of port, and although I'd bought him a bottle, it just didn't seem special enough in an ordinary bottle bag, so I set to work with making something extra festive. Why use one red fabric when you can use twelve? These pretty red prints are a selection of fabrics from various collections by the Australian designer Lynette Anderson. Once these small squares were pieced together, they were spray basted to a piece of wadding and quilted very simply in a cross hatch design using a red Aurifil 40wt thread. I also used one of Lynette's festive prints for the lining too (this one is from her Candy Cane Angels collection) and teamed it with some red ricrac trimming...
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...the front flap of the bottle bag is hand embroidered. This was stitched prior to the bag being constructed and I used a Cosmo stranded embroidery thread with a selection of simple embroidery stitches - back stitch, cross stitch and running stitch...
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...and here's the completed bottle bag. I'd bought this pattern, Christmas Cheer, by the Australian designer Janelle Wind about 15 years ago, so I'm not sure if it's still available. However it is an absolute joy to stitch, so if you're lucky enough to find a copy too, I'm sure you'll enjoy stitching it as much as I did. And I'm sure Mr F will prefer the actual contents, rather than the fabric container, but now I've made this pretty bag I can use it again every year - I'm sure he'll be thrilled with my cunning plan to re-use it!
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