Quilted Tote Bag

I am going to be teaching a few classes at My Quilt Shoppe soon. I have posted pictures of the Victorian Applique Series I am doing in an earlier blog.

The other class is a Quilted Tote Bag from Jo-Lydia's Attic. It is really nice and roomy, measuring 15"high and 18"wide. It has 8 pockets, an attached change purse (which I use for sewing/painting notions) and a swivel hook for keys (or scissors). There are pockets inside on all four sides. There are also pockets outside on every side, one large enough to carry a cutting mat to class! It would make a great class tote, with all those pockets you can keep everything organized. I also placed a separating zipper on the top panel. You can unzip it completely so that the panel drops down inside the tote when you want easy access to your things. There is an eyeglass case pattern included with the pattern. Oh, and there is also a total of three tote sizes in the pattern.

It is called "The Quilted Carryalls".

I made one for myself out of pre-quilted batiks but needed to show one made from "quilt your own fabric"...so I picked something from the new fabric at MQS.

I choose three fabrics. One for the main side panels, a contrasting fabric for outside pockets and one for the inside of the bag (inside pockets). This is my progress so far.

This is all the things that I needed gathered together. If I were keeping the bag, I would have quilted batiks probably. But this fabric is nice as well.

I just quilted them with a simple grid pattern but it looked very nice after it was done. I just loved spending time with fabric, thread and my sewing machine!

And a close up of the quilted fabric. The pattern suggests that you cut the fabric and batting before quilting it as it goes much quicker than quilting the entire piece then cutting the pieces out. And it went very fast for me. I used a bone crease tool to mark my grid with. No markings to remove!

Hope you enjoyed this little blog about part of what I did yesterday.

This morning I took the last batch of Rust Fabric out of the bin! It looks beautiful! I also added quite a few different items to see how they would rust. Results later...

This afternoon I'm going to pick my niece, Kara, up and I'm going to teach her how to sew! I'm excited about this! I love teaching the next generation this craft. She has awesome taste in colors and design and I'm sure that she will choose beautiful fabric. We're going to make a tote bag. Not the one from above, I think that a true beginner needs one a little less involved. But I will show her how to mark it for the grid quilting...maybe I'll ignite the quilting fire in her! Here's to Kara!