Tag Archives: Lush

Simplicity 1556

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The trouble with buying bubble bars from Lush, is that they come in a paper bag. Great for the environment, but what do you store it in to stop all the pieces going everywhere? I’ve found some small plastic food containers in Poundland that work pretty well, but then you get a pile of them in the wardrobe, which invariably falls over whenever you want to find something.

So, I decided to make Simplicity 1556 for my Mum’s Christmas present – a drawstring bag with pouches around the outside. There’s no dimensions given on the pattern envelope, but going on the fabric requirements, I hoped it would be large enough to work.

basket1

Armed with my red and orange outer fabric, and some nicely patterned orange lining fabric, my first problem was with the usual “fusible fleece”. Not having any of that to hand (and realising that if I bought it from the only shop I found it for sale, it’s cost more than the fabric did), I decided to use 2oz polyester wadding instead. I quilted that to the base and bag linings, so you can’t see the stitching on the outside.

asket2

Attaching the pouch strip was challenging, and some of the pouches are a different width to the others, but it fits the items I want to put in there. I will also admit I messed up the drawstrings, sewing the wrong ends together, but it still draws closed so I’m not going to unpick that!

I wanted to give her a pack of bath bombs from Slimbridge Soaps, but the packet of 4 wouldn’t fit into the pouch, so I made some small sewn bags to put them in individually – that way I can get one item per pouch, so it’ll fill them up 🙂

basket-pouches1

Lush didn’t stock her favourite bubble bar this year, but I did find an alternative – but what to put it in? I couldn’t just put it straight into the pouch, as they sometimes leave a greasy stain and that wouldn’t look good for a present. So I made a quick quilted pouch (quilting the lining again), which should mean the bubble bar can slide in, and hopefully not make a mess everywhere!

basket-pouch2

 

Basket fabric from Fashion Fabrics, Christmas fat quarters from John Lewis

Fabric Basket

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Ever since I was given a Lush bubble bar for my birthday a year ago,  I’ve developed a bit of an obsession with things from Lush. My main trouble though, has been where to put everything; there’s a limit to how well you can stack bath bombs, pots of hand cream and shampoo bars, especially when the Lush packaging is mainly paper bags – that isn’t ideal for a damp shampoo bar!

My room’s colour scheme is purple and silver, so I didn’t really want to buy a basket to put them in, as it’d be guaranteed there wouldn’t be one that was quite the right size or colour. I did however find some really nice purple cotton fabric in the sale, and with the tutorial from Delia Creates, I was able to make a basket that not only fits the products, but also looks much better than a pile of bags and pots on the surface!

I found a few plastic containers in Poundland (these easily house a shampoo bar) and which work perfectly for storing my shampoo bars, conditioner bar and also pieces of soap. This basket is the perfect size for those, a few pots of hand cream, and also a bath bomb!

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To stop the purple looking a bit too heavy, I did the top stitching in white to lift it a little. Silver might have looked better still, but I didn’t have any suitable thread. I decided that the handles weren’t really needed, so I left those out. The basket is washable and also fully reversible – if any of the Mask of Magnaminty ends up on it, it’s not the end of the world!