A Bag Lady That’s Me

I’ve been a bit quiet this month but my sewing machine has not. My two best customers, now two people whom I consider friends since we've been texting back and forth over the past several months (Lana) and couple of months (Audrey) have made sure of that!

Knitting Project Bag

Lana put in two more requests for when we'd returned from our Maritimes trip. One was a cat bag for a good friend of hers, small size (the usual makeup bags I've been selling for many years), and the other was a surprise bag for herself. I had free rein to choose fabrics and colours, knowing now what she likes; the only stipulation was the size, the 'tall small bag', sizing phrase as determined by her! Instead of my usual SandraJaneQuilts label, I sewed onto the bag side a piece of the selvage from this fabric, most fitting for a bag that will hold beautiful knitted projects.

Well, I have to admit it was a bit daunting. She'd commented to me that she really liked one of Audrey's recent custom bags, in blues and yellows, so I kept that in mind. I started by looking through my stash, and happened upon a fat quarter stack I'd purchased from Craftsy several years ago, Jennifer Sampou's Shimmer 2 for Robert Kaufman. Ooh. I had actually started ironing the FQs but hadn't got very far, so that's where I started. It was also a bit hard to make myself cut a couple of squares from 23 of the 26, because I do not have a quilt design or pattern in mind for this stack, another I bought simply because I loved it. But I cut and arranged and rearranged (two hours of it I kid you not, trying to balance colours and motifs) and here you see the finished project bag. The lining is an older piece of Hoffman International Fabrics, Royal Peackocks, another shimmery fabric that tones in perfectly with this one. This size is 10" high x 8" tall. I mailed it yesterday to her and I hope she gets it by Friday, as I cannot wait to hear what she thinks!

Well, I do not make just one bag at a time; it is much more efficient to make two. One of Audrey's requests had sparked a light blue and light orange/peach combo. When I sold the mug cosy to the author Charles de Lint, that soft butterfly fabric was the inspiration for the second project bag which you see below. That's my lace shawl project inside which is a little past the halfway done point. I love this bag, and the lining, a fat quarter that has marinated for some time in my small chunks yardage drawers. I bought it originally thinking it would work for sky in a landscape design but haven't used it yet, so now I have! Half of the FQ is gone, just enough to line another bag...

You may notice a few squares of my Sewcial Bee Sampler in this bag!

This bag is listed here in my Etsy shop in a new section, Project Bags. Lana encouraged me to make some because she said, and I quote, "I bought a lot of bags...And they were nice... But this was the first time that I audibly said 'wow' when I got it out of the package. Honestly I'm not exaggerating." 😊 Wow, from me indeed.

Audrey put in another request this month, a bag for another niece of hers, this time in bright blue with a bit of black, themes of beach, garden, volleyball and Taekwondo. The closest I had to the Taekwondo theme was a piece of Japanese fabric where I thought I could cut a square of origami birds, but the colours were wrong. I didn't have any volleyball, but I did have the beach ball that could work...so she said yes to that one. Again, as with Lana, I laid out a potential outer layer with extra fabrics around it for them to substitute, so the bags become quite personal.

Bike tracks rolling across the bottom for a sporty recipient

This was the second bag I made while making Audrey's blue/black bag, another blush pink one. All of the zippers are now from Zipper Valley. They just look so much better than the dressmaker weights I had been using. It adds about $2 to the bags, so I may bump the price a bit come January, especially because mine include free shipping, and the three comparables, two in Manitoba, one just up the highway in St. Mary's, do not.  The zippers and fancy pulls help mine stand out from the others, and I love to buy from a Canadian source.

Lana's cat bag request ended up just such fun! We were not 'feeling' the cat fabrics I had, though one is most likely going to grow up into some bags... After a day of back and forth and rooting, nothing much had stuck, and I was considering redesigning the bags to have larger rectangles to accommodate this one fabric. Then the following morning I pulled out a little plastic container of some pets-theme fabric for making cat mats, and found this fat quarter. Were all the colourful cats able to fit in a 2" finished square? YES! I sent it to her and she loved it. Lots of fussy-cutting ensued, and it was Lana's idea to pop in alternate black squares, and some cat tails and even a bit of a cat bum swishing in from the sides! The two sides are slightly different; I had to work in all the cats!

I love those two leaning their heads together.

I sent Audrey a gift of a lake-themed mug cosy which was in my previous post, and when she got it, she texted me, so in love with it and using it already. She asked me to make her another like the one in my shop (that had, funnily enough, sold a few days before she received her lake one). Well, thankfully I still had the hats and teacups fabric, and off I went, making her one for her friend. I had enough of the fabric to make two, so that's what I did! This second one is pictured in the top row, Audrey's in the bottom row. The only difference, because I never make two identical items, is that the lining, Hello Tokyo, by Robert Kaufman, a fun scallops print, is oriented the opposite way in each. It's all gone now too, a good feeling I'm getting quite often of late, and that is the plan! Use it up!

The last hats and teacups mug cosy is listed here.

Remember the cat fabric that Lana and I both quite liked (I happen to love it for several reasons)? When I was rumination on a different design for my makeup bags, I had thought of featuring a larger rectangle or square of the pair of cats with squares around them. That idea sparked two new-designs Canada bags!

These are the same size as my original makeup bags, 10" wide by 6" tall. I had just sold my one and only Canada-themed bag I'd made earlier this year when I was working on Audrey's and Lana's bags, so I had the thought to make another, especially since it's Christmastime and people are looking for unique gifts, and we Canadians are still adamant about buying Canadian and supporting Canadian businesses, especially small ones. So these two were birthed.

The Glowing Hearts main fabric is by Moda. Sweet Elaine, who sparked this year's quilt along second quilt, Glowing Hearts, sent me a chunk of her leftover fabric, which made for a fun, appropriate lining for one of the bags, as well as a couple of squares in each.

And finally, another project bag is now listed here. This one is a wide large bag, 12" wide by 8" tall. I had made a yellow one for Lana as per request, very similar to this one, and, as you know, I never make just one! I loved the bright yellows so much, as well as the buttons fabric lining, that I had to make a bag similar to hers, though this one has pops of grey in a few of the squares.

Keep in mind these bags do not have to be used for knitting or crochet projects but can serve as zipped bag holders of all kinds of items. Audrey uses hers for multiple purposes, none of which have to do with crafts. I've made a custom one for a scrapbooker, and another was bought to hold her kids snack items, so really the sky's the limit for these.

Now, as of last night I've loaded onto Avril my poor neglected Sewcial Bee Sampler, which may have its own name...I think. and I plan to start quilting it this afternoon! She's actually been a lovely spectacle to behold on my design wall all month. My design wall won't be blank for too long--I've also been very occupied writing up th pattern for Arabesque, which was this year's SAHRR quilt. It's currently being tested and should be released very soon. I plan to remake it, though smaller than the original, so fabric needs to be pulled for it. Never a moment's rest, and I like it that way.