A Bunch of Bags

 Hi all -

Wow! Time is flying by! I can't believe it's October already! Looking at the trees, it's obviously October. But you would never know it by the weather. It's been sunny, warm and dry since that little snow storm I mentioned last time. I'm loving it! It's going to be a real shock when the weather turns!

Since my last post, I've taken a break from quilting and have been making bags instead. I started with the "Hands Free Diaper Bag" by Missouri Star:

Hands Free Diaper Bag

This is a small diaper bag designed to be warn cross body.. It has a large main pocket for diapers and supplies and a pocket on the front for the baby wipes that has a flap giving you direct, easy access to the opening in the package:

Hands Free Diaper Bag Opening for Wipes

As you probably guessed, this is for my nephew's baby girl who is due in November. I think it will be useful for those short trips where you don't want to carry a big diaper bag but still need to be prepared for emergencies. Of course I decided to use a directional fabric for the bag so I had to pay close attention to what I was doing to get the print right-side up. And I made a lot of mistakes along the way and had to redo several parts. But I love how it turned out! 

I love to make bags and hadn't made any for a while, so this bag really whet my appetite! I really wanted to make a ByAnnie bag so I looked through my patterns and picked something, but then realized that I didn't have enough Soft & Stable (the stabilizer ByAnnie bags are designed to use) to make the bag. But I was going to Quilt A-Fair last Friday so I decided to look for some there. Quilt A-Fair is the Colorado Quilt Council's annual show. It's kind of a weird show because there are a bunch of vendors on the floor and the quilts are displayed in the rafters. It's really hard to see the quilts and there aren't a lot of them, so I actually didn't even realize it was a quilt show for the first couple of years that I went. I thought it was just a vendor's market. But now I know to look up for the quilts so I can enjoy them as well as the vendors! Anyway, I was able to get some Soft & Stable and I also found a kit to make a couple of ByAnnie bags that I liked and the sale benefitted the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum. So I switched directions and made the bags from the kit:

Renaissance Ribbons Bags

It is a wonderful kit with fun Tula Pink fabrics and ribbons. The pattern is "Renaissance Ribbons Bags" by ByAnnie. I made the big bag first to get a feel for the pattern:

Renaissance Ribbons Bags - Larger Bag

The larger bag is generally the better one to test the instructions with because it's usually less fiddly than the smaller bags. For this one, I originally put the zipper on upside-down and had to take it off and redo it. In this case, it would have been better to have made that mistake on the smaller bag instead since it was tightly stitched and took some effort to remove! But I got the big bag nicely finished and then was able to make the smaller bag with no problems:

Renaissance Ribbons Bags - Smaller Bag

I think these turned out cute and I love the lining fabric as well:

Renaissance Ribbons Bags - Lining Fabric

These are really easy to make and I can see making some more in the future.

Then I went back to the ByAnnie pattern I had picked out before the quilt show. I had picked out all of the fabrics before the show so now I just had to put it all together. I had chosen the "Ditty Bags" pattern (the link is for the 2.0 version of the pattern which looks a little different from the original version that I have) and again started with the largest bag:

Ditty Bag - Largest Version

It's hard to tell, but my main fabric (which is one of my favorite all-time fabrics) is, of course, directional so I had to play with the instructions to get everything in thge right direction. The pattern has you cut a large piece of the main fabric, quilt it and then cut out the needed pieces. And the pattern uses a single large piece for the main body of the bag, which wraps around from one side to the other which would make the pattern upside-down on the back side. Instead, I cut out my main fabric pieces first, cutting the main piece in half (and adding seam allowance) and then piecing it back together to get everything in the right direction. Then I arranged the main piece and the side pieces on the Soft & Stable and quilted everything as directed. Well, almost as directed. I didn't read the directions carefully and the other bags I had just made had the lining sewn separate from the outside of the bag so you quilted the outside fabric without the lining for those. Of course, this bag is made by quilting all three layers (lining, stabilizer and main fabric) into a single piece and then the seams inside the bag are covered with binding. I didn't do that and didn't realize I had done that wrong until I was too far along to fix it, so this bag has the Soft & Stable as the lining. Luckily, that will work just fine and just not be as nice has also having a lining fabric:

Ditty Bag - Lining

I do plan on making matching bags in the smaller sizes, but I'll do those correctly so they will have the lining fabric on the inside! I'm really enjoying the bag making so you'll probably see more scattered in with my other crafts in the future!

I really need to get back to the Baby Elephant quilt. I need to finish it by Christmas. Then I have to get back to a log cabin quilt that I started a couple of years ago that I've decided to finish for my brother-in-law for Christmas this year. Our family is doing Secret Santa this year and I chose his name so that's the only Christmas gift I have to make this year. Then I'll be free to flit between all of my projects and crafts again.....

Nancy