A Little Blue Lunch Bag

Behold! My new little lunch bag.

At our last meeting of GHS&S, our project for the day was to make this bag. We had been given a requirement list some weeks prior, but typical me left everything until the last minute. So much so, that I had nothing ready to take to the meeting. I had promised another lady that I would help her sort through some fabrics, so that would take up some time. I also quickly packed some tracing paper, pens, pencils, rulers, my sewing box, and a photo for inspiration. If all else failed, I could do some pattern-making ready for another project I wanted to do.

As it turned out, our meeting took much longer than normal, with lots of things being discussed, leaving less time to work on our projects. There was also a visit by a lady with not one, but numerous large bags of donated fabric. Well, there went the remainder of the morning. There were tables and tables full of fabric, ready to be sorted & gone through, with ideas flowing as to what we could do with it all. We were told we could take what we wanted. I came home with a small pile that would not have made a dent in what we had to choose from, most of it furnishing fabric.

My new little lunch bag has been made from some of that donated fabric. The pattern called for 100% cotton fabric, and the finished sample looked like quilting fabrics. It also called for firm batting or fuseable interfacing. I chose the light blue as my base for my bag as it was a furnishing fabric that had weight to it.  I figured it needed no interfacing or batting to help hold the shape, especially with all the folding and double layering that goes on in the making. The dark blue that I used for the straps and the lining is much lighter in weight. I chose not to interface this as I thought the light blue would be enough to hold it firm.

In hindsight, now I have made this bag once, quilting cotton would be ideal. The light blue furnishing fabric that I used was a little thick with all the double layering. It's great for the support, but in stitching across those base corners there were 8 layers of it. The machine could handle it without a problem, it was probably more the fact that I had turned it through to see how it looked before stitching the corners, and did  not want to turn it back. The outer fabric being stiffish made it hard to turn through the little opening.

The dark blue fabric is a dress weight polyester, good for making skirts and pants. In hindsight, it could have used a light weight fuseable interfacing to give it a little support. The furnishing fabric on the outside only provides support part way up the sides, and the handles only partially help the top section.

The bag is a cute little one. I think it has been designed as a handbag. There are pockets all around the outside supposedly suitable for keys, mobile phones, sunglasses etc. I personally like my possessions behind closures so they don't accidentally get lost. I also like closures at the top of my handbags for the same reason.

This is the first time I have made this pattern, and now I know how it goes together I may make a few little quirky changes. In the meantime, this cute little blue one can become a lunch bag for my Guild days. It can easily fit a sandwich box or salad bowl, a water bottle, coffee mug, and piece of fruit.

Now for those of you that have read this far, I know it has been a long time between drinks, but rest assured I have been stitching every day. My current project is certainly of the slow cloth variety

Piecing for Charity

My local ASG Sewing Group, the Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews, is sewing for charity. Every meeting, one of our members brings along her huge bag of fabric scraps and  we try to put together fabrics to turn into quilts. Some of the hard work has already been done, where embroidererd squares and possible fabrics to go with them have been bagged together. I brought two of these bags home with me last month to see what I could create from them.

In the first bag were some lovely digitized machine embroidered squares, with some very girly handbags and shoes. All stitched onto pink polycotton fabric.

In the bag with the embroidered squares were pieces of other fabrcs, some large, some small, some prints, some plain. All were off cuts, some with odd shaped pieces already cut from them.

So, what to do with it all? How to put it all together?

I started with borders around the embroidered squares, then added some sashings, a fine floral border to tie them all together, then a wide pieced border of plain pink with a pink and white check. Overall effect, not bad. The quilt still needs to be layered with batting & backing, then quilted & bound, but that will happen sometime in the future. I am sure some little girl somewhere will be happy to cuddle up to this once it is finished. Now on to working out what to do with the second package I have.

Quilting For Charity

My new sewing group is on the road again, sewing quilts for charity. This one was embroidered and  pieced by one lady from donated and cut squares , and I offered to quilt and bind it. It is now finished & ready to be donated to a deserving cause.

Sharing the work load of a project like this is interesting. Some of the squares were cut on bias and  some of the strips were not cut straight. Therefore the quilt top is pulling in all kinds of directions because the different grains are fighting against each other. We knew this from the beginning, but we figured it was going to be loved & dragged around for comfort by some grateful child so we continued. The quilting was fun because of all the grain changes, but I still managed, and the bind may not be quite straight, but we figure it will be loved anyway. I have two more to do, both need to be pieced, so they are next on my agenda.

I might add here that our new sewing group is going great guns. We have 16 members on our books, ranging from beginner sewers to experienced dressmakers, and we have plenty of room for more. So if anyone would like to come and join us, all info is on the Australian Sewing Guild website. Just look under the "groups" tab, then click the drop-down arrow in the "select a group" section. Scroll down and select the Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews, then click the "select a group" button. This will give you meeting times, dates, a contact, and also a map of how to find us. We'd love for some new members to join us.

Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews - Our First Day

What a great morning I  had yesterday. It was the first meeting of our new Australian Sewing Guild group, the Georges Hall Sew'n'Sews. We were all a little anxious, being a new group, a new venue, wondering how it would all go and what we were going to do. In hindsight we shouldn't have worried at all, it was just a fabulous meeting. We had thirteen in attendace, 1 appology, and one person walk in off the street to see what we were doing. By my maths, that makes 15 people, and they are all talking about comming back. Yippee!

The first adventure was unlocking the door and getting it to stay that way. In the end we just clipped the door back with the hook provided. It was only a door into an entry, and as there was another door into our hall space, the cool weather oustide wasn't a problem, especially when we found the airconditioner button. Once that was pushed it wasn't long before we were all warm and cosy.

The second adventure was the lights. So many light switches! They were all labelled, it was just a case of finding the ones that we required. Easy to find for the next time.

Then came the tables and chairs, and I am pleased to note that everybody helped. At first we only got out three tables, thinking it would be plenty for the people we knew that were comming, but it wasn't long before we were putting up more to accomodate all the newbies.

Now that was just the setting up, the real guts of the meeting was yet to come. We talked about what people wanted to do, what they wanted to get out of the group, and came to decisions as to how the next few meetings would go down. There was show and tell aplenty, including the quilt blocks at the top by Margaret. So bright and fabulous, all made from scraps.

This quilt was also by Margaret, full of beautiful applique.

Jenny J was off to a special function and had made this stunning outfit to wear, including the matching bag. Somthing that would cost $$$$$ in any little boutique.

There were also these fun tissue box covers by Jenny J that will be for sale, great for that special place or person.

 Then there were the conversations, so manyof them I couldn't keep up with them all. There were conversations about quilts, quilt blocks, quilting and how to get quilting designs onto fabric. Paper pieceing, mitered corners in binds, making personalised dress forms, how to choose  threads, pants fittings, taking patterns from a garment, how to read commercial pattern instructions, sewing machines, sewing machine mechanics, scissor sharpening............and that's just what I was a part of. There were conversations happening all morning, everyone was chatting and it was all about sewing. All the new people were made welcome and were included in on conversations. Just fabulous! In the end we were havng to push people out the doors because our time was up. Now that's what I call a sewing meeting. May there be many more to come.

Acknowledgements:-
Photography - Helen N