A Commissioned Toiletries Bag

You may recall the totebag I made for my friend from my yoga classes. Well, I’ve made her a coordinating toiletries bag in a custom size.

Amongst the lavender (two years old now) and calla lilies (five or six years old now!)

When I gave the tote to her, I asked if she wanted a matching makeup bag, and she said no, she didn’t think so; they were too small for what she needed. I told her I did have a couple of bigger ones in my shop and so she said she’d take a look.

A couple of days later she said she actually might want one! She’d been using a drawstring bag for the past many years, and really should replace it. Well, I knew there was a tutorial for the drawstring bag by In Color Order, so I sent her a photo of it because it is about the same size as her bag. She really liked it, so I said I’d bring the one my friend Pat made me from that pattern, as well as the bigger bags I’ve made, to the next yoga class for her to see.

Long story short, she asked if I would make her one of my bags, a pink one with a pop of black, even bigger than the biggest one in my shop! She wanted it 12” tall by 12” wide, which is the size of her drawstring bag. I considered making it out of 3” finished squares (less seams) but when I saw the amount of pink squares in my 2.5” tray, I knew I should use as many of them up as I could. She told me her favourite black prints from her totebag, so I cut four of each, two for each side. 

How would I incorporate them? I’d started with one diagonal but it looked odd, considered adding a second, but then wasn’t a fan of the ‘X’ shape it would make, which is when I hit upon adding two smaller diagonals to echo the main one. I even used another of the black fabrics in her tote, the Celestial one.

She chose the lining from a few choices I gave her. It’s the one I would have picked because there’s a square of it in the front. I am so please that it stands up; I was worried with this much height that it would not.

Was I tickled--oh, and so was she, as well as my friend Connie, who participated in the past two years’ QALs, making that gorgeous orange Lyra quilt—to see the zipper. I almost put a grey one in, a new acquisition from Zipper Valley, but then took a deeper look into the ‘general’ bag of zipper tape and zippers…yasss!

‘Handmade’ silver zipper tab, with the perfect pink and black zipper!

Another happy find was scraps of an older frogs doing yoga print. The background is black, and I was able to cut a square where ‘Breathe Deeply’ is centred, and no frog parts creep in, lol. I put it in the top row. If you zoom in on the first photo you can see it. I thought that was à propos! She loved that too. And now Zipper Valley has one (Connie) or maybe two (her friend who makes lots of bags) new customers!

Latest order. The silver ones says ‘handmade’, and I didn’t have any gold pulls but a couple of the tapes have gold teeth. I love the free pull Alex includes.

So I decided to make an aqua bag at the same time as the dark blue one I showed a couple of weeks ago. I always make two at a time for efficiency. I had to wait for the gold pulls though, to match the gold zipper teeth.

Gold zipper pull put to use!

A bit of a beachy theme.

And in my continuing effort to use up more of my stash, I made one with a Sweet Tea by Moda charm pack I won from two years ago in Project Quilting.

‘Handmade’ silver pull put to use

Both are in my shop!