Birthday Bags Part 3: Mum’s Turn

I made another bag….I’m nothing if not predictable.

When I ordered my quilt fabric at christmas the store had some charm packs on offer, one of them was prefect for my mum so I bought that. I think I mentioned that before but now I’ve finally gotten around to making the bag she requested out of them.

We sat down ages ago and I made her pick which squares she wanted, I took photos then they went away for another couple of months. But her birthday was at the end of April so at the start of the month I realised I should probably get on with it! I bought a black paisley fabric from etsy to match the tone of the other fabrics. My mum doesn’t tend to like dark things (blacks and greys) but I couldn’t think of what else would work with all of the colours. I was going to get a navy blue paisley but this one was on offer for about half the price so this is the one I went with. I think it works out well. I bought two fat quarters worth of it completely blind (I probably should have calculated how much I’d need but I guessed) as it turned out it was just about enough.

This was his much I had left over:

It’s not a lot!

I made sashing for the squares she chose to complete the two front pieces of the bag and also straps out of this fabric. Then I resorted to a bright red poplin fabric I had spare for the lining.

I also had insulated batting spare from when I made my table runner and table mats so I asked if she wanted a normal tote bag or if she wanted an insulated one for shopping and stuff. She said insulated which means I’d need to quilt it a bit. I think that’s why she said that. Anyway here are the two sides of her bag sandwiched and quilted.

I sewed the tops of the front and lining pieces together first with the straps sandwiched in between so there wouldn’t be any visible seams around the top of the bag. I’m not following a pattern of any kind so I was really relieved when I turned it all the right way around and everything was in the right place. I was half expecting to have sewn the handles underneath the lining but it was all good so I then inserted the batting between the top and lining and quilted the three layers together.

I didn’t do much quilting. I only stitched in the ditch around the 9 patch and did a border to hold the edges together while I seamed them. It’s insulated batting so I figured the more holes the less it would work!

Once that was all done I put them back to back and seamed them. I boxed the bottom then neatened the edges and TA DA! An insulated bag for mums birthday.

I’m mega happy with it. I think it’s my favourite bag yet. It was here birthday so she obvisouly also got a card too. I made one with one of her favourite quotes on. Unfotunately my cutter is being a little bit temperamental (I’ve had to take take all my papercut cards down from my shop as it just won’t cut them) which meant that I pretty much cut the whole card by hand with a scalpel (the machine had at least scored the lines so I knew where to cut). That wasn’t fun, but at least it worked and she got a lovely card out of it.

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