Hello Hello!

Warning…image heavy post 🙂

I’m coming in a day early this week with something super colorful and fun!   A little while ago Fat Quarter Shop sent out a call for quilt bloggers who might be interested in doing a blog hop remix of sorts.  I looked through the available projects and offered to help with a Simple Zipper Bag.  I had a couple of fun ideas to make this project very me 🙂  You can find the original tutorial here FQS Simple Zipper Bag

I headed to my stash and remembered this fabulous EPP (English Paper Pieced) project I put together a while ago with no real plan in mind.  I hoped that I could make it work for this project.  The “regular” version of this project called for a mini charm pack and I found this older April Rosenthal Best. Day. Ever! set that actually matched with my EPP project really well.

I also found some Kona Tangerine and some Kona Basil in my stash with some basic white zippers.

For the backing I used a beautiful white and sparkly silver print.  I believe it is from Michael Miller and while I couldn’t find the exact print this one is really close.

I planned to use a great gray and white striped print from Riley Blake for the binding.  I love a striped binding 🙂

I also found that fun lime green print in my stash and some quasi zipper pulls in my old scrapbooking hoard.  They had adhesive on the back so I just used some Goo Gone and removed it before using them.

At this point I had decided to use my hexi piece as the front of one of my pouches so I got some scraps of cotton batting and attached my walking foot to do some machine quilting.  If you follow along the original tutorial you can see how Sheri McConnell did some straight line quilting on her pouch.  Make sure to watch the video so you can see the step by step process.  I thought it might be fun to practice and use a different style walking foot quilting since this was a smaller project and I wouldn’t need to worry about trying to do something crazy on a big quilt.

I was totally inspired by Jacquie Gering’s book Walk.  Which by the way is a must have if you don’t already own it!!

I was making 2 pouches and for this one I went with an organic design that I just made up as I went along and didn’t mark a single thing.  Very out of character for me 😉  In the end I am happy with how it turned out but definitely could’ve gotten more precise lines if I’d taken the time to mark my quilting plan.

You can see the quilting really well on the backside of the piece.

Not perfect but good enough for today 🙂

I trimmed my piece down and squared it up, then set it aside to start on my second pouch.

For my other pouch I followed Sheri’s tutorial more closely and used the Best. Day. Ever! mini charm pack from my stash.  I also decided that I really loved the Kona Tangerine from above so I set the Kona Basil aside for another project at another time.  I pieced the mini charms together, grabbed some scrap cotton batting and made a quilting plan based on a design from Jacquie’s book.

I took the time to mark everything out in this fun geometric Orange Peel design.  It does take some extra prep work but the results are OH SO WORTH IT!!

You can see the evolution of the stars/geometric orange peels in the photos above as well as some of my marked dots used to line things up.  The squares of the mini charms were the perfect basis for this design.

My crazy red hair is in the way a bit but you can see me working with my walking foot on this cool design.

Major photo overload, I know.  I just can’t help myself.  I REALLY love how the quilting turned out!!

Again the quilting really pops on the solid orange doesn’t it?!  The orange is actually the lining of both bags.  If you watch Sheri’s video you can see her simple construction method.

For the back of both pouches I used the sparkly silver and white print and the orange for the lining again.  I free motion quilted them together using this fun Stipples Made Easy papers.

Basically you adhere the sheet to your project (there are tiny adhesive strips at the top and bottom of each sheet) and use your sewing machine to trace along the lines.  I bought some of the paper to try it out and so far I loved it.  I am a bit of a perfectionist so I always struggle with stippling on my own when I can’t make it “perfect”.  While this still isn’t exactly perfect it’s close enough for me 🙂  I will definitely be buying more of these papers in other designs.  Think clam shells etc.

You can see my perfectly imperfect stipples 🙂 (and my wonky stay-stitching that gets cut off later).

I followed the tutorial to insert the zippers and trim things up again.

Now I just needed to attach my binding and those cute zipper pulls I found.  I made my 2.5″ binding and attached it to the back of my pouches, like I normally do.  

I ironed it and wrapped it around the front, then glue basted it, which is my preferred method.  You can find a tutorial on my method here Glue Basted Binding Tutorial  I like to attach the binding to the back and wrap around to the front.  As opposed to the front and wrap to the back, as typically I care more about how it looks on the front of the project vs. the back.  Just personal preference and a bit of OCD.

Then I machine stitched it down on the front side of both pouches and attached my zipper pulls.  Then I was good to go.

I like to keep my stitching line right at the edge and honestly I think it looks just fine.  Plus in the case of a zipper pouch that will get a lot of use I think hand binding might not last as long.

All said and done, I’m super happy with my finished pouches and have already used them at a class at my favorite LQS.  This tutorial truly was super simple and easy to follow and I love this method of attaching the lining at the quilting stage.  Made the whole project quick and easy.  Make sure you hop over to the Fat Quarter Shop blog The Jolly Jabber to see what other makers have done to remix this fun pouch project.

Until next week…

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