une escarcelle pour une belle femme

As everytime I do something for someone I love....I freak out. I want it to be as pretty as can be , to show them how much I care. Usually in the process I really go crazy.This belt pouch was no exception.

First things first,  I  imagine how I want the pouch to look like, tolors, form and materials. Lately my favorite pouches are felted medieval-inspired ones and as this gift was ment for a re-enactor well, it fitted perfectly. 

Nooow the tricky thing here is that I'm just learning to make my own crochet patterns and usually after felting I end up with weird forms ooor not exactly what I expected. Once again, this was the case jajaja. I was getting angry wheeeen a lovely bear told me he couldn't understand what was wrong with it "c'est jolie" he said. So after this, I realized I actually liked it even if it wasn't exactly as I'd imagined jeje, sooo from here on, everything was a breeze. Loved the result, hope Laetitia did too.

Voici some pics, let me know what you like or what could be improved.

just out of the washer

felt detail

 adding the cord ( I looove making cord je ne sais pas pq)

 Hand painted buttons, and twisted cord details

 the closure, braided cord and hand painted button

hand cross-stitched linnen lining (tongue twister)

Voilà l'escarcelle que j'adore ^^

my fave till now

wordless

German relic pouches,late 14th C.

I cant wait to get started: burnt orange, yellow and blue

I'll give details later :D

St James cross belt pouch

I know this lovely minstrel who looves medieval stuff and above all Santiago de Compostela, (Santiafo-St James, same person) so last year (OMG time flies....) I decided to make a special belt pouch for him. Fave yarn shop, some nice woolen yarn, leather, red woollen cloth and off-white linen and off I went...jejeje

It's a simple bag a bit wider at the bottom and rounded on the corners...simple but pretty :) The effect I wanted on the bottom couldn't be achieve by crocheting in circles, well I couldnt't, sooo I had to do a front and back parts. After putting it all together, felting came along so the bag can endure the hard use a mistrel could give to it. When felting crochet, I always try to remeber that it'll shrink more horizontally than vertically...or ...how was it?

While the washing machine did her work, I marked and cut out the St James cross ( Cruz de Santiago) from beautiful red woollen cloth (dunno why but M'm head over heels for the texture in it)

I'd never done this before, so..well..my stitching didn't look as pretty as I thought it would, actually it's quite dreadful, soooo.....

I used those uneven horrible looking stitches to embroider a more even endging..better looking doesnt it?

The lining was something that took me a while. For some reason (dunno why????), I coudn't get it to be the right size...at the end it turned just fine buuut the first atempt ended up being a lavender sachet jejeje.

For the leather straps I got some help from the above mentioned mistrel. He lendt me waxwed cotton and the tools needed for making the holes (dunno how those are called), he even explained how to do it...hehehe of course he had no idea of what I was doing...or so I think ¬_¬

My fave is the little leather button, my mom's idea. She has a bag from morocco with that type of closure, so when I told here I hated how my store-bought button looked with the leather strap, she suggested I make this other instead....and It worked! ^_^

So, here's the finished pouch. It's has no synthetic materials in it.