Monday, August 25, 2014

Nature Bags

Quite a long time ago I made my children each a "nature bag" and I've never posted pics of it here. You can see the big gap in posting. Well, I've still been sewing and crafting all that time; just not posting. I'm sure you won't be interested in a catch up of everything, but there are some projects that others might like to get ideas from, so when I think of it, I'll put them here.

So the nature bags are supposed to remain well stocked with the things we find useful when we go on the kind of nature walk that includes observing things closely and/or drawing something from nature.

Here are some pics.
This is the outside.  The other bags were other colours (in fact, the others were hand dyed hemp muslin) all with contrasting lining.

You can't see the inside well, but this gives you the idea. There is a big pocket at the back for the nature journal/sketch book, and lots of smaller pockets. I made pockets for everything I thought we'd need - some pencils, a water filled paint brush, a monocular, a loupe, some little specimen containers, etc. There are also some loops on the sides. Here's a pic:

The loops have clips so the items can be removed easily. One has a mini combined compass, thermometer and torch, the other has a safety whistle.

Here's the contents, out of the bag. The monocular is missing, and so are some pencils and an eraser. There's plenty of room in the middle of the bag for a water bottle and small camera or iPod ( for taking photos) if they want to take those.

This is in the back of their sketch books. It isn't attached.

It's their watercolour paint palette. I got the idea from Jane Davenport's website. It uses wonderful paper impregnated with paint (or perhaps it's coated with paint) called Peerless Watercolors. I bought a pack of rectangles of them and cut off tiny rectangles to make the palettes. The name of the colour and a sample of each colour is under each rectangle. There's plastic taped between the two sides so the colours don't mix and to use for mixing while painting.

I'd love to know what else you would put in these bags. We do try hard to keep them light or there are complaints about carrying them!