Sewing: The Fat Quarter Bag

See that bag? The one up there ^? I made that!

Last week a my crafting friends and I hired out the room in which we usually crop for a marathon 6-hour, 6-sewing-machine bag-making day.

[Purely by concidence, on the same day my fellow Copy + Paste blogger Kirsty was posting about a challenge in which she created a patchwork project in a set time limit too - the results of which you can see here].

So we've all been working under strict time pressures it seems lately and as Jan commented, once all our machines were set up, the room swiftly took on the appearance of a bag-factory sweat-shop:

Darcy brought in a 'Melly & Me' pattern for a handbag using four fat quarters of fabric. After some deliberation I chose which colours I wanted to use and brought with me 2 fat-quarters and one piece which was twice the size, which I reckoned made it a 'fat-half' ... even though that sounds quite wrong ....

Anyways ... one of the first steps was to quilt the bag. I chose to do freestyle curvy lines rather than a straight line grid, purely because if you call it 'freestyle' no one can tell you've done it wrong!:

After the quilting part, there was lots of ironing and fiddly things to tackle and the idea that we'd walk away from the day with a complete bag seemed like a pipe-dream. Something of a panic set-in as it began to feel like we'd spent all day making a rather elaborate ... place mat:

From it's humble place setting conception, several hours and three homemade Mars Bar crispie cakes later ... a bag was born:

Isn't it cute?

I'm really proud that, while it wasn't possible to get it finished in the time we had the room booked for, after driving home I unpacked my machine, plugged it in and kept going until it was complete .... which took until 10:30pm!

For a small bag it's surprisingly roomy and really rather pretty inside.

I'd been saving that fat-half of button fabric for something special and I think this might just have done it justice. I also managed to sneak on a few extra [real] buttons too:

So there it is the 4 fat-quarter, 12-hour-shift [with tea breaks and showering time included] handbag! While frantically trying to complete it in time, [before a rather strident caretaker evicted us!], I actually broke into in a sweat!

Until then I'd not been aware of the possibility of turning to sewing my own accessories as a means to keep fit.

Aerobic crafting ... it's the excercise of the future dear reader ...

Dare I ask which crafts leave you perspiring and breathless?

Jx