Anita G. Solomon has a favorite addage: sew on Federal holidays. Sew I did, and I was able to finish my tote bag. The tote bag that took 100′s of hours and lots of money to get “just right”.
I have a real soft spot in my heart for Baltimore Album quilts. When Ellie Sienkiewicz started writing her series of books on these quilts, I bought all of them and have made about 15 blocks so far, over 15 years. The problem is, I don’t bring the blocks with me when out and about because I am always worried about getting them dirty and losing pieces. All those hours spent on soccer sidelines and dentist offices wasted. Then I saw the book 101 Fabulous Fat-Quarter Bags, by M’Liss Rae Hawley and realized that a custom-sized tote would solve the problem.
She has terrific ideas for 10 different types of totes in this book. I started with the instructions for the Fat-Quarter Carryall, modified the dimensions so a pillow, a block in a protective cover and the stitching tools would fit comfortably inside. There was a lot of denim left over from another project and I was itching to try more machine embroidery, so it all came together for me this weekend.
Front
M’Liss recommends auditioning handles for the totes, and the current black ones shown aren’t quite right. Maybe they can be covered with more of the blue denim. Something will feel right to me in a few days and I can replace them. At any rate, I’m ready for appliqué action when I’m sitting at the next soccer game.
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5 Comments
Your bag is drop-dead gorgeous!
Beautiful work, Sandy. I’m jealous!
What a wonderful idea, and a beautiful tote. How did you do the peacock?
Just beautiful!
Hi. Thanks for the comments. The bag was a lot of fun to make.
The peacock is a machine embroidery design published by Hatched in Africa. It requires 4 separate hoopings and once I got the hang of always matching the final center jump stitch, it was not hard to do. I needed several trials to stabilize the piece successfully, because the first partial hooping puckered. I ended up using 2 perpendicular layers of medium, cut-away stabilizer on the back of the denim fabric (used temporary spray adhesive to hold it in place) with a layer of heavy fusible stabilizer just in the hoop. I also slipped another piece of tear-away stabilizer under the unit just before the stitching started, it became attached via the embroidery stitches. There was also a layer of wash-away stabilizer on top of the denim to keep the stitches from sinking. I decided that the armor-like approach would work best.
After I finished the hoopings and rinsed and dried the piece, there was a little bit of curvature in the surface of the denim, so I did what quilters do – added batting and a light backing layer and I echo-quilted around the peacock. This step really made a difference and flattened the whole thing out.
That peacock called to me for years before I finally used him in all his beauty.