Drawstring Pouch

Drawstring pouches. They were the first item I learnt to make when I first started out. I figured drawstring pouches have all the basic requirements of a bag. They can be small so don't require a large amount of fabric and if I can make a drawstring pouch, I can make anything else. If you'd like to follow my previous adventures in making drawstring pouches, just go to the sidebar Labels and click on "Drawstring Bags".

If you are keen to learn how to make your own drawstring pouches, here are 2 tutes which I've personally tried and they will provide you with the basic techniques:
Happy Things
Pink Penguin
Happy sewing!

For this little bag, I used a colour scheme which I don't normally go for - green-yellow and that strange tone of red/pink/peach stripes. I kinda like it. Does it look weird to you? I like this green-yellow and I'm thinking of making 1 whole bag with the fabric. I'm not sure if customers would like it though. I know most customers like the beige/brown tone because it's safe and easy to match with their clothing.

I'm counting this my 2nd bag for June MAAD. Are you checking out my cane basket I used as a prop?

If you see any dust on the basket, it's just your monitor.

Isn't this basket a beauty? Sylvia Toh gave it to me many years ago and I use it to keep my embroidery thread. Once I used it as a prop when I sold at MAAD and a customer wanted to buy the basket!

I only have 17 more sewing days to go till June MAAD and it's not looking good for me production wise. Worse, I've signed up for 3 additional craft sales dates in mid June/July! Every year there is a Great Singapore Sale from May 28 to July 25 and this year I wanted to be part of it. Yep, I really need to summon my elves.

Some good news for me. My kids managed to pass their Chinese overall so mom didn't faint. It's a good thing that Chinese subject comprises several components like oral, listening comprehension, creative writing and multiple choice kind of questions. But I'm not leaving their next results to fate so I did the most Singapore thing. I went to Popular bookshop and bought a ton of workbooks for my kids to work on. (many other parents were there too!) Popular bookshop sells mainly workbooks for students to practice in the hope of obtaining higher grades. In Singapore, outside-school enrichment programs and practice worksheets are a big business. A nice lady helped me pick out the Chinese stuff. I picked the audio/visual books for my girl as I think it'll help keep her awake. For my son, there was very little choice so I had to take the printed workbooks.

The big problem with getting my children to learn more Chinese is they won't do it on their own. Mom has to listen in too. I suffer from a Chinese-sleep. It probably started during my school days when the Chinese language teachers read from the textbooks and my eyes go glassy and...... My husband suffers from this disorder too. He's worse. He goes into a coma!

It's really expensive to educate a child in Singapore. It's not enough to go to school to learn. The schools are really crazy competitive and they set the bar so high that the parents have to fork out huge $$ to tuition centres to ensure their kids pass their exams. My son attends outside Chinese lessons once a week while my girl attends Chinese and math lessons. I had to transfer my girl to a different math class this week because her results plunged. At $17 an hour, I expect the tuition centre to deliver at least average marks. Nowadays, when I hand over my money to the education sharks, I convert the amount to the number of bags I have to sell, it really hurts!

Now that I have to tutor my girl Math at home I'm finding how hard Primary 5 math is. There are many problem sums I'm unable to solve. School in my days was never this hard!

Gotta wake my girl up for her Chinese enrichment class. See you soon.