Tote bag for Mom ;)

I recently made my Mom a tote bag with her favorite color - pink!  

Yes, the straps are VERY pink!!

I like the length on these straps :)

Much better than the last bag I made - what a difference 9" makes!.

The outside has a quilted pocket on the front and 

checkerboard patch throughout.

 It has a parachute buckle to lock it together.. as well as 2 clips to hang your keys, etc. on (not shown)..

  Here's the inside lining and 5 inside pockets.

The outside is quilted with a cross pattern. 

There is Pellon 809 Decor-Bond® stabilizer that is quilted through.  

I wasn't happy with how well the quilting showed up.  

Plan to use a layer of batting in between on my next bag.

 

Here's a detail of the quilting on the front pocket. 

This has a layer of batting  and I love how it showed the stitches.  

A walking foot was used for all the quilting on this project.

What have you been working on lately??
I'm linking up with Lee over at Freshly Pieced -  WIP Wednesday!

Enjoy Today! Marie

René's Birthday Pillow :)

For my friend's recent birthday I was invited, along with a wonderful group of girlfriends, to an extended sewing retreat!  What a blast we had!

As a thank you I invited all the girls to sign a piece of fabric that I would incorporate into a memory pillow.  I was able to get 4 of the 6 signatures before I assembled the pillow.

The pressure was on for to last 2 ladies as they only had one shot at getting it right!!

I added a label to the center with René favorite - a seashell - along with the date and location. 

Then the pressure came back to me to quilt the pillow, with all the signatures - one shot but it came out OK. 

Here's the finished pillow - René took the picture herself on her bed at the retreat!

What is the last thing you made as a gift?
Thanks for stopping by and Enjoy your day!
Marie


Linking up WIP Wednseday with Leah over at FreshlyPieced
Stop by to see all the wonderfully creative going-ons

WIP Wednesday!

It's been a busy week!  I spent last weekend at a wonderful retreat.  Worked on a couple of projects.

I finished a baby quilt top using the disappearing 9-patch with these fun crayon fabrics.  I plan to pick an overall design to quilt this on my machine.  More to follow.

I also continued to work on my Mason's Whirl Wall design.  I plan to have it available in a pattern on Craftsy soon.  Here is the WIP:

I was trying to make it with the background PLUS 4 but I think PLUS 6 will work better.  Going to add a couple of more fabrics and go at it again.  

Here is the pattern as I used it for the ALQS8 in which I used leftovers from a bali pops PLUS 2 backgrounds.  I like the scrappy look best myself.

In 2014 I hope to complete my Free Motion / Crazy Quilt 30 block project that I started in 2011. 
This is the 3rd block:

 This block contains Leah's 21 through 30 designs:

 I really had fun with this one. Loved getting back into working with the stitches.  I am working from Leah's book which you can find on her site in an eBook or Amazon as a regular book.  There have been a couple of blocks that were hard for me to figure out where to start going by the picture, for those I visited Leah's site where I could easily look up each design by there number and see Leah's wonderful videos. 


 
See - Part #1 & Part #2 in prior blogs.  Each block showcases 10 designs.


Thanks for stopping by.  For lots of other creative happenings stop by those
site that I link up with....



 

























 

Marie