More Making

Thank you for Christmas wishes! It was nice to hear from some of you who read my blog. I always enjoy a good catch-up.

Our Christmas was quiet. It's been eight years since either of our children have come to see us for Christmas, and I admit that I miss that family craziness. Also like last year, we didn't travel to see them because of the potential for risky winter-weather driving. Still, the two of them found ways to share time with family: our daughter and her family at their lake home; and our son and his family with our DIL's parents who moved near to them earlier this year.

Dan and I enjoyed the other half of our Thanksgiving dinner (thawed from the freezer), and my homemade pumpkin pie. I mostly spent time at my Janome, quilting while listening to an audiobook: The House Between Tides by Sarah Maine.

Now that gifts have been gifted, I can share what I made for a special friend. It's a Sew Together Bag.

I made one for myself in 2013, and struggled mightily with the poorly written printed instructions (not nearly enough diagrams or photos, either), so it took quite a bit of determination to use the same pattern to make another. It helped to follow the online sew along tutorial by QuiltBarn.

Of course, the most fun is choosing fabrics. For the exterior I selected one of my newest pieces: Diving Board by Alison Glass. Noticing that there was a medallion in the print, I decided to work Karen's initial into that spot. I chose a computer font that I enlarged to fit the opening, and then traced the design onto a piece of linen. From the back, you can see the fusible stabilizer I added to give more support to hand satin stitching using perle cotton.

I cut out the fabric print circle leaving 1/4" to turn under, positioned the initial in the opening, and clipped the edges of the fabric circle to hand-sew to the embroidery. While it appears that I also stitched a lovely scallop around the initial, in fact that's the fabric design!

Here you can see the entire exterior of the bag, before it was quilted and sewn together. Notice the medallion that's on the opposite side of the Sew Together bag. Yes, it took quite a bit of measuring to get the print fussy-cut to the right size. 

Quilting is straight stitching, with a pass around the initial medallion to ensure it's not going anywhere. 

Here's the bag in progress. I used a couple other prints from the Diving Board collection, some Tattooed (yellow print) by Libs Elliot, and the gold binding is Blueberry Park. 

I added a pretty silver zipper tab that says "handmade."

Three zipper pockets and four open pockets are great for storing sewing supplies. I use mine primarily for English paper-piecing projects.

I'm pleased at how the Sew Together Bag turned out, and Karen certainly seems happy with it too.

Doing a little sewing for myself, here's my new fabric case for my new music stand, the latter of which I need for playing with the Ukulele Club performance group. I modified the dimensions of this Drawstring Backpack pattern. I'm very glad I bought several yards of this colorful print when I first fell in love with it - a rare favorite from JoAnn Fabrics.

Now, I have a complete matching set: ukulele case, ukulele shoulder strap, and music stand case. There's no mistaking mine from the standard black that most ukulele players have!

With the year-end in mind I'm trying to finish one more quilt that I started earlier in the summer. It's getting lots of rulerwork, and some big stitch hand-quilting. You know. Just keep makin'! Right? Linda