February non-quilt craft report:
Confession of a shopaholic... I love shoes and purses about as much as I love fabric and crafts! I changed my shopping obsession as soon as I started quilting tho - all my personal money has been going to fabric in the last 6 months which is good and bad haha. Today however, I was finally able to combine 2 of these favorite things... bags and crafting!
I have had this
tutorial from P.S. I quilt saved for a long time, just waiting for me to use it. I also bought some Amy Butler bag books that had me drooling with every turn of the page! I have only been sewing really since June 2010 however, so I was a little hesitant to try something other than quilts and monsters.
Today I got over that fear, grabbed Rachel's tutorial and some scrap 5inch charm squares, and made this:
For my first bag, I am pretty proud of myself. It only took 8 charm squares for the main part, and 2 for the bottom - I decided to go with 2 different ones that blend with the rest of the bag and I like the way it turned out. I still need to tuck the white lining in a bit better and sew around the top but I needed a scrap bag to continue crafting so it got used as is.
After realizing what an easy tutorial this was, I decided to double the size and made this next:
For this bag I used 4 Jelly Roll Strips from Moda - Love is in the air, plus 2 10x10 Layer Cake pieces for the bottom and one for the handles.
You might notice that the bottom looks a bit strange but thats only because I experimented with some quilting, as you can see better here on the unfinished project:
I like the overall turn out of this one - although it ended up being far bigger than I had planned. Apparently tomorrow I need to make the pattern only 1.5x's bigger for a "scripture/book bag" which is what I was aiming for when I ended up with this tote bag size. Super proud of myself for jumping in, trying something new, and not calling my mom once to complain or get advice haha. Yay for crafts, yay for bags, and yay for wonderful bloggers with great tutorials! Thanks so much for sharing your wisdom and wonderfully easy to follow instructions
Rachel!
The pretty pink one is made of leftovers from my mom's Christmas quilt and will make a great gift bag for her V-day present.
This one is a new scripture bag out of scraps from another Christmas present. I really like the way it turned out and love the leafy stitching on the handles:
