Bagged!

Lately, I have been on a sewing kick, but not a quilty kind of kick, more a proper sewing kick, to make other stuff than huge blankets.

I had this idea of making project bags (kind of like a tote bag for a crafty project) out of a couple of fat quarters. I didn’t have a pattern – I don’t even pretend that it is a really original idea.
So I grabbed a couple of fat quarters: one from my personal stash and one from my business stash (because it worked SO well with my first choice of fabrics) and got started.
My first ever project bag

Fabrics: 1 FQ Paisley from the Bloom and Grow range by Riley Blake and 1 FQ Essential Dots by Moda in Red.
It’s about 11″x18″, so it’s the perfect size for my knitting projects: big enough to fit a magazine or pattern book, a couple of balls of yarn and several bits of the project. And it looks SO pretty.
My only ‘mmm, could have been better’ about it is the way I did the handles. I decided to make them short and fat and it doesn’t quite work. They should fit over the handles of my stroller, but they are not the most convenient things ever.
It was all handsewn, so where people with sewing machine would topstitch, I used a contrasting thread of embroidery floss and made a running stitch along the top and bottom of the border and on each side of the handles.

Despite the relative slowness of handsewing my first bag, I started another one! Mainly to see if I could sort out the handles issue. So I grabbed another couple of fat quarters (actually, I had half yards of the fabrics I chose for my second bag) and I got going.
My second bag!

Fabrics: 1 FQ of 2-D Zoo by Michael Miller and 1 FQ of dots from the Hello Betty line by Chloe’s Closet for Moda.
I LOVE those fabrics together. This time, I made some long and thin-ish handles and they worked out perfectly. I LOVE this bag (I love the first one too!). I didn’t topstitch the handles, I had reached the end of my hand sewing mojo.

BUT! Something incredible happened. My husband, being the wonderful, fantastic, incredible husband that he is, surprised me by buying me the sewing machine I wanted. It arrived on wednesday and if it was a man, I might think about cheating on my husband with it. It is THAT good. (Maybe I shouldn’t write that, my husband reads my blog!) So, I thought that the best way to get to grips with my new toy was to make stuff and a bag (and a little purse) seemed easy enough to start with!
My first ever machine sewn bag (and matching purse)!

The sewing is not perfect, lines are sometimes a little bit on the wonky side. Though, I LOVED sewing those long straight lines with the machine, so much faster than by hand! And it makes things look so much neater. I decided to use one of the fancy stitches to sew the bottom of the border (instead of topstitching) and I’m SO glad I did: it looks so pretty and gives it this little extra je-ne-sais-quoi.
This bag and this purse will soon be on their way to France to my mother. She loved the one I made for Mother’s Day and had asked for more, so I hope she will like this little addition to her collection!

I think that’s enough bags for me for a little while! Now, I’ve got to go back to my quilting projects and it’s going to be fun to use my new sewing machine for that! Yippee!!