Creative Canvas Bags

The second Craft Café took place last Sunday with visitors coming to design their own canvas bags. We welcomed some repeat customers and some new faces as well.

We started with a short tour led by Andy, Head of Education at the Pitt Rivers Museum. This concentrated on bags, and patterns within the collection, which could inspire our decoration. We visited a variety of objects including some ceramics from America.  The example below from the collection was made by the Zuni people of New Mexico. It is painted with images of cloud, rain, lightning, and road-runners, the bird native to New Mexico and Arizona. It was a lively tour and very much enjoyed by all.

1886.54.3

http://objects.prm.ox.ac.uk/pages/PRMUID6822.html © Pitt Rivers Museum   

When we returned to the room everyone was given a canvas bag and there was a table laid out with fabric paints, fabric pens, beads and ribbon. People were free to decorate the bags as they liked, though I showed an example I had made using masking tape to create geometric patterns.

Making a hand painted bag using masking tape is easy. You can think of a design beforehand, but random patterns work well too. You just need to lay down strips of the masking paper wherever you want the bag to remain white. Then paint the un-taped areas, a trick is to use a brush with quite stiff bristles as this creates a sharper edge (something I learnt from experience!) When the paint is dry simply peel the masking tape off.

There were some very bright and beautiful bags created. Look at the colours on these!

It was amazing to see the care and thought being put into the craft. Corie, pictured below, made a bag for her part Galician part Cypriot mother-in-law. It featured aspects of the Galecian landscape including a valley, hill and trees. Symbols representative of her mother-in-law's heritage, an Olive tree representing Cyprus and the symbolic shell of the patron saint Santiago of Galicia. Along with depictions of the London and New York City skylines where she has lived. Wow!

Another bag made by Tugba was directly influenced by the Pitt Rivers objects on our tour. Look at the picture of it she tweeted below!

We’re looking forward to the next session this Sunday where we will be painting Easter eggs. But until then… keep crafting!

Book for our other Craft Café sessions here.