Quilted bag

Over the years my fabric stash has just got bigger and bigger. It's mainly off-cuts from evening dresses, sun tops and skirts and Mr Gertie’s old work shirts. 

I mentioned to my Mam that I might have a clear out of my fabric stash as it was taking too much space in my work room. She suggested instead of throwing some of it away, why I didn’t make a quilted bag.

She goes to a Quilting Group and a few months previously one of her quilting friends had passed round a pattern for a large tote bag.

I don't know whether this was a ruse to get me into quilting, as my Mam, who's a beautiful quilter, has been trying for years to get me interested in it. 

I remember making some kind of ‘patchwork thing' when I was in primary school, but it was using the paper method (you use paper as a template for each piece, hand sew them all together then remove the paper. Extremely boring!!!!), and ever since then I've associated patchwork and quilting as being monotonous….

My Mam promised me the bag was simple to make and a great introduction to quilting. See – told you!!!!! 

I had to admit that the bag did look nice, and being a woman, you can never have enough bags, so said I'd give it a go.

My Mam was over the moon and couldn't wait to have a good rummage through my fabric stash for colours she thought would make a great bag. Hang on a minute – who's bag is it!!!!

The bag was made up of 46 five inch squares cut from Mr Gertie’s old work shirts and some off cuts from a couple of summer skirts. All I had to do was cut them out then stitch them together.  Sounds simple. It would have been had I read the pattern correctly….

I had assumed that the finished squares were five inches so had cut the squares to five inches then added the required seam allowance. However the five inch squares had already included the seam allowance so the correct finished size was 4 ½ inches.  Oops!!

So, instead of having a gargantuan bag made up of 46 squares, I scaled it down a little by not using all the squares. 

Once I stitched the squares together I quilted the bag simply by using the sewing machine footer as a guide and outlined the edges of the squares.

The flap was made by stitching two squares together with a little interfacing sandwiched in-between them.  For decoration a button salvaged from an old knitted cardigan was attached to the front of the flap. A press-stud was stitched to the underside of the flap and to the front of the bag. 

For the lining I simply stitched three long pieces of fabric together.

To make the bottom of the bag sturdier stiff cardboard was cut to the size of the base then covered in lining fabric. 

I later added a pocket inside the bag by hand stitching one of the spare squares to the lining. 

Gertie xx