Madly Off in All Quilt Directions

I have ADHD of the quilting kind.  Here's what I did today:

Always seems to be an animal in my quilt pics. . .

I decided to go with my gut and with Cynthia's suggestion to not put more white sashing on before the yellow border for my June scrap-a-palooza quilt.  I'm really happy.  I wanted it to just flow into the border, and I think with a frame it would have give the quilt a different feel.  This way it's very soft.  I've named it Floral Dreams.

Animal. . . or two!

I still had quite a lot of smaller scraps left, and I just want to get rid of them already!  So I remembered seeing a link on Nancy's blog, PugMom Quilts to two adorable makeup bags on Moda Bakeshop.  So I checked out both, this one and this one.  I cut the fabric for both, but made the Quilted Patchwork Pouch.  Here it is in the first stage:

And here is the finished bag!

Sooo cute!  The only problem was I didn't have a D-ring, nor did I have the right size of zipper.  After 45 minutes of searching for both a D-ring and a zipper, I gave up.  However with the zipper fabric stops (tabs) Julie has you do, my 18" zipper became an 11" one in no time.  And when I was making supper, I opened the utensil drawer, and saw Bella's laser mouse pointer, with this slip ring on the end!  Voilà!  I love the pull tab!

This is a great tutorial.  My only problem was that my zipper fabric stops got kind of crunched and do not lie flat.  I ripped and redid one, to no improvement.  I must be missing something when you sew the entire bag around the edges, as I cannot seem to get the tab to lie flat.  I had a similar issue with the Ellie bag from Fabric Mutt.

Other side

I quilted it on my Bernina with Sulky Blendables 30 wt in a soft variegated pastel run of colours.  How I love that thread.  If you try it, just remember to back off your upper tension and use a Topstitch 90 needle.  I will definitely be making more of these in different sizes.  Gifts!

Leftover yellow fabric from Floral Dreams for the lining

 And the other direction was the Avanté, making the quilt sandwich that will become my yoga mat bag.  I feel like I've gone backwards in ability on the Avanté for whatever reason, and I am still pretty low down on the learning curve of quilting on a longarm.  I used the micro handles for the pebbling which helped, but I have a "bump" that grabs the machine in one spot, and I cannot seem to figure out what is causing it, grrr.

I've used motifs from a few different designers here: Leah Day, Angela Walters, Kathy Sandbach, and Cheryl Malkowski.  I need to get this one finished for A Lovely Year of Finishes!