Re-purposing The Humble Coffee Sack

This bag has probably travelled more miles than me, seen some pretty strange places and travelled the high seas. It landed in my Recycled Gallery studio this week and with a bit of love has been given a whole new lease on life. 

This is just part of the story, where it goes from here....well I may never know. For now it is going to keep on travelling. I have put this little foot stool out in the shop so it can find a new home. 

Working With Coffee Sacks -  Crafty Tips (learnt the hard way)

I love working with coffee sacks in my designs. The bold inky black font and bright colours matched with earthy hessian is just my kind of raw style. I have been working with hessian coffee sacks for years now, so here is a few quick tips for those new to this up-cycling coffee sack fun:- 

1. Don't wash them. The ink fades and the crispness is lost. Instead, dust them out, hang the bag in the sunshine for a few hours and then iron (hot with full steam). 
2. Clean your sewing machine after use. Hessian is fibrous and gets everywhere. 
3. Hessian is mercilous and should be cut with a heavy duty pair of scissors not your good sewing ones. 
4. If stitching together hessian, iron flat every seam to avoid too much bulk. 
5. Don't pair the hessian with thick fabric as this will be too thick for a domestic sewing machine to handle. 
6. Make sure you zig zag the edges of the hessian to avoid the seam fraying. Hessian is a loose weave and a single line of stitching may not hold. 

Until next time, 

xx Isabella