Name Tag Bags

Hi all -

My latest project has been to make a set of name tag bags for myself and my two Sew Day friends who are also going to Houston. Here are the bags that I made:

They are from the "To Market, To Market Tote & Tag" pattern by Patterns by Annie.

I found the pattern to be pretty straightforward, although I kept making mistakes on the first one since I had a different construction in my head than what she had in the pattern. The one place where I thought the instructions were lacking was where the instructions describe how to put together the strap with the hardware. The written instructions didn't make any sense to me at all. In the instructions, Annie points you to a video on her web site, but that video is for a strap that doesn't have all of the hardware that this one has. I think the instructions could greatly benefit from some drawings for this step. But the video did give me enough of a hint that I was able to work the rest of it out myself.

The only change I made from the pattern was that I decided make the bag just using fabrics stabilized with DecorBond. The instructions tell you to quilt the pieces using either Soft and Stable or regular batting. I thought this would make the bags too thick and ungainly. The bags with the DecorBond are still fairly thick, so I think I made the correct choice.

The first bag I made is for myself and I decided to use Kaffe Fassett fabrics. Here is the front:

You can see there's a vinyl pocket for the name tag and a little zippered pocket for money or whatever. And zippered pocket is on a flap that opens up to reveal a larger pocket inside:

On the back there's another pocket:

The second bag is for my friend Cathy. The choice of fabrics was pretty easy since she is very fond of chickens:

Can you tell that the red fabric actually has little yellow chicks on it? On the inside you can see the chicken wire lining fabric I used:

And on the back her pocket has the addition of some sewn slots for holding pens (hard to see in the picture since the thread is black and blends in with the fabric). I couldn't do that on mine since I got confused and put things together in the wrong order.

It was a little harder for me to decide on the fabrics for Cindy's bag. Cindy doesn't really have a motif that she collects. She's an art quilter and has made some really cool butterfly and moth quilts, so I decided to go with butterflies:

The inside:

And the back:

I really fell in love with this fabric combination while I was making the bag so I'm going to have to think about a quilt for them. Unfortunately, I don't have much of this gray, which I really love, but other grays will be nice, too.

Nancy