Bags!

Started a new "Towne Girl" purse... this one I plan on keeping myself, LOL!

Two separate sides of the "Towne Girl" purse... ready for the zipper.

 The 2 sides are quilted and enveloped, with the handles sewn on, but I needed a smaller zipper to finish the purse. 

Insides of purse with lining and pockets & my kitty helper taking a break! :)

Went to Red Deer yesterday and bought 3 zippers, hoping one of them would be perfect!  The I spent the afternoon making fabric cases for the zippers, one for the purse above and one for my other current project, the little pink bag below. :)

I'm also two thirds done a baby bag to match my pink "Modern Baby" quilt. I tried to follow the directions, which I had downloaded free off the internet, but they are not very clear or straightforward. I have made a number of bags before so I knew what I was doing. Otherwise as a newbie, I would have become rather frustrated with these directions.  The directions are called "Batik Bag" from the www.keepsakequilting.com site.  

Chevron front design

This was my first time trying to sew diamonds together. I learned the hard way that you do NOT match up the sides exactly when you sew the rows together, you have to make a slight overlap at each end, with a corner of one diamond sticking over at one end and a corner of the other diamond sticking over at the other end...

 I loved the chevron front created out of diamonds (or, for the mathematicians in the crowd, rhombis :)  so I  made a diamond tracer out of cardboard and then traced 34 diamonds from the wrong sides of the leftover fabrics from my "Modern Baby" quilt.  25 of the diamonds created the bag front.

The back was supposed to be a plain piece of fabric with a 9 diamond pocket, but I changed it and made the 9 diamond/ chevron pattern part of the back. I decided to add more pockets on the inside instead... :)

One other tip when sewing together a bunch of squares or blocks...

Once you have them arranged the way you want them, take a photo before you start sewing them together.  I DIDN'T do that and wasted a lot of time taking diamonds apart again... I had been trying to save time by chain piecing the diamonds, but after a while I realized I had put some of the blocks back into the row upside down so they were now next to an identical one in the next row, which I did not want!  Then I had to start shuffling them around again, ripping some diamonds apart again, and rearranging them. I wished I HAD taken a photo. 

After considerable time wasted finding the 'perfect' arrangement, I did get my camera out and take a photo. And sure enough, I did have to refer to that photo a couple of times to get the diamonds in the right order. Lots of wasted thread and wasted time seam ripping could have been avoided!!!

Outside of bag sideways: Front on right,  bottom, and back of bag on left sewn together

The lining of the bag has been cut. Now to get the inside pockets done!

But, ALAS! I am having sewing machine issues again! This time it's even worse than last time and I only just got my machine serviced and cleaned 2 weeks ago!!!  I am so fed up with my Pfaff 1546, I'm thinking about using it as a boat anchor!