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January 30, 2014 · 9:38 AM

Hexagon Zippered Pouch

I made up a little pouch yesterday.

Hexagon pouch made with Riley Blake Fabric

The Modern Quilt Guild provided 6 fat eighths of this Riley Blake Fabric and challenged its members all around the world to make something from them and post a picture by Feb. 17th.

DCMQG’s group of fabric for the Riley Blake fabric challenge

The rules are simple – you can make anything that is quilted using these fabrics or any Riley Blake fabric and you can also add in any solids that you wish to.

Back of pouch

I just wanted to make something up with the bundle we were given. I used the whole piece of the solid grey for the outside and a white and grey stripe for the inside. I simply cut the grey piece in half and quilted both halves.

Quilted wavy lines and added some leaves to one line just for fun.

I then made English Paper Pieced hexagons out of the other 4 fabrics into 2 flowers and appliquéd them onto the outside.

EPP hexagon flower in progress

I wanted this flower to be flowing off the edge.

I inserted the zipper using my favorite technique of using little fabric tabs on both sides of the cut zipper to make the final product all neat and tidy. How this works is that there doesn’t end up being any zipper parts caught in the sewn side seam. In fact, I try to make it such that the fabric tabs aren’t caught there either.

Zipper inserted. You can’t see it here, but the lining is also attached at this point.

I had intended to make a flat bag, but right at the very end of sewing it up, I decided to box the bottom corners so that the bag would stand up.

Boxed corners on the bottom

This kind of messed with my hexagon flower placement, but I do think it makes the bag more useful.

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Filed under DC Modern Quilt Guild, Gifts, Purses and Bags

Tagged as DCMQG, EPP, hexagons, Modern Quilt Guild, Riley Blake fabric, zipper insertion, zippered pouch

November 20, 2013 · 3:53 PM

Barbados Bag

I just finished making the Barbados Bag by Pink Sand Beach Designs

Barbados Bag

The finished size is approximately 10″ wide by 11″ tall which makes it a pretty good size for an everyday bag. I’ve had the pattern for awhile but was a bit overwhelmed after looking at the directions and hadn’t taken the plunge to give it a try. Thankfully while shopping last week with a friend, she saw the bag made up, liked it, and we decided to try it together. The woman in the shop gave us great advice – trust the directions and follow them step by step without double guessing or looking ahead.

The outside front has a zippered pocket and a non-zippered pocket.

Following this advice did work and the bag does go together very nicely! The only thing that we didn’t think was crystal clear, was where each piece of fabric we cut would end up in the final bag. So let me spell this out for you if you are considering sewing this bag. The “Bag Front and Back” end up being that dark blue fabric on the top of my bag. It does not show on the outside very much but does form the body of the bag.

Two pockets!

The “Front Pocket” and “Back Pocket” are the blue floral fabric that is the dominant fabric of my bag. Finally, the “Pocket Accent” is the lighter fabric in the middle of the other two fabrics only on the front.

The outside back has a divided pocket.

The inside of the bag has a divided pocket on one side. The directions were to divide it in two but I decided to add a couple places for pens also. I should have dropped the pocket a bit lower in the bag than the directions called for since the pens are so close to the top of the bag, they almost don’t fit under the zippered top.

Inside pocket.

The directions tell you how to shorten and make tabs for each end of the two zippers which gives an extremely professional looking finish. It also removes any metal parts that your needle might hit during the sewing and removes the bulk of the zipper from any seams. These are all “win” situations for dealing with zippers! I will use them again in other projects.

Wonderful zipper insertion directions!

As far as I’m concerned, a zipper at the top of a bag doesn’t get any better than this!

I used by Annie Soft and Stable instead of fusible fleece for the front and back of the bag and a heavy weight interfacing I had on hand in the places that called for Decorbond. Typically I like a stiffer bag that doesn’t show every lump and bump of what is inside of it. If you like a softer bag, you should use the fusible fleece.