A bit more involved than the coin quilt but quite liberating as most of the pieces are asymmetrical. You can skip the small squares in the sashing for an even easier quilt. Just cut quilt long cream strips for your horizontal sashing.
This project will work well for larger prints though you can always enlarge small sections of the pattern and use that instead.
If the project is not clear from the picture, keep reading.
Fabric embroidery
My choice of fabric was Peonies by Heather Bailey. It’s a simple large print that can be traced easily.
The flowers in the fabric were too large so I adjusted the size to make them smaller, made the picture black and white, remove the black colour as much as possible and ended up with this.
As you can see, the original fabric has larger flowers than the picture above.
Then I traced it on a piece of linen.
I chose some matching colours in green.
And I started embroidery using chain stitch for the petals and stem stitch for the stems.
Voila the embroidery!
I stretched the embroidery on a ironing board and steamed it to get it as flat as possible.
Detail of the embroidery.
Side to side with the fabric.
Making the bag
Materials
10 1/2 x 9 inch in designer fabric
12 1/2 x 11 in of linen or plain fabric for the embroidery
1 1/2 in velcro
45 in x 2 1/2 in strip in linen for the strap
45 in ribbon for the strap
45 in x 1 in of batting for the strap
3 in x 4 1/2 in linen and again the same size in the designer fabric for the tab
2 1/2 x 4 in of fusible interfacing for the tab
20 x 8 1/2 in of fusible interfacing
21 1/2 x 10 in of batting plus a 9 in x 5 in for reinforcement
20 1/2 x 9 in of linen for the lining
I used Pellon Peltex 71F for the interfacing with is very hard
Cut the embroidery panel to 10 1/2 x 9 inch down from 12 1/2 x 11 in.
Cut another rectangle the same size, ie 10 1/2 in x 9 in.
Sew both panels on the bottom edge paying attention to which way the pattern goes, eg with the flowers up if using flowers.
Pin, stitch and press with seams open.
Attach the interfacing to the fabric using manufacturer’s instructions.
At this stage the bag starts getting a bit harder to handle because of the interfacing stiffness.
Lining
Cut
21 1/2 x 10 in of batting plus a 9 in x 5 in for reinforcement
20 1/2 x 9 in of linen for the lining
Place as per picture and stitch leaving a 1/4 in seam allowance.
Trim excess batting off.
Press the lining well.
Fold it in half to find the middle point.
Pin on the middle line.
Place the small piece of batting in the middle as per picture.
Stitch.
If necessary, trim excess batting off.
Now the lining is ready, cut a 1 1/2 in piece of velcro.
Place one of the pieces in the middle of the panel as per picture, at 2 inches from the top edge.
Stitch around the velcro.
Strap
Cut
45 in x 2 1/2 in strip of linen fabric
45 in x 1 in batting
45 in of ribbon in a matching colour
Start by placing the batting in the middle of the strip of linen fabric.
Fold both sides of the linen strip in as per picture and pin.
Then, over the seam line, start removing the pin, cover the line with the ribbon and pin back. You could do both things at once rather than in two steps but I think it is easier to manage in two steps.
The stitch along each side of the ribbon and again very close to each edge of the linen strap.
Making the tab
Cut
3 in x 4 1/2 in linen and again
3 in x 4 1/2 in designer fabric for the tab
2 1/2 x 4 in of fusible interfacing for the tab
Take the linen piece and attach the other piece of velcro close to the edge and centered as per picture.
Then attach the fusible interfacing as per manufacturing instructions to the wrong side of the linen fabric.
Place the designer fabric and linen fabric right sides together as per picture and stitch leaving a 1/4 in seam allowance.
Turn inside out and stitch around the tab as close to the edge as you can.
Place the tab as per picture centered in the middle of the top edge of what will be the bag.
Stitch along the top.
Now fold the panel in half and pin.
Stitch along opposite sides leaving the top open.
Turn inside out and press.
Fold the lining in half as per photo and stitch along the sides leaving the top open.
Leave a 4 in opening on one of the sides to turn the bag inside out.
Now place the straps on each side of the bag.
Pin.
Insert the bag inside of the lining as per picture.
Pin along the top edge and stitch well.
Turn the bag inside out through the 4 in opening in the lining.
This tutorial follows from the previous thread sketching tutorial I made. I will use both resulting sketches to make an item. If you prefer you can just make a placemat out of this sketch.
To do thread sketching you only need to have a machine that can have the feed dogs down while you stitch away so you can move your piece wherever way you want.
Materials
Some fabric scraps
Stabiliser (printing paper will do)
Thread in a contrasting colour. I used cream because my fabric was black but black on white/cream will work too
Print pattern. The pattern will print over 2 pages. You will need to trim one of the pages to the right or left, depending on the page you trim, align pages together and stick together with some tape.
Now cut a piece of fabric as large as the pattern.
Note: My piece of fabric is larger than the pattern because I trimmed the pattern as it was aligned to the top and I wanted it centered but I did that after I cut the piece of fabric using the pattern as a guide.
Pin well.
This time I did not add another piece of paper to the back because I thought it may not be necessary.
Now stitch along the lines one first time using free motion.
This time I only stitch through the design once to see if it was any easier to remove the paper.
Remove paper.
Easier said than done! I almost gave up and threw this piece in the bin.
Some thoughts about using paper as stabiliser
It is not always easier to use paper than it is to use proper stabiliser. This could be helped with shorter stitches perhaps.
This pattern had more lines than the Picasso sketch I did last time so it was more time consuming. I put the whole thing in water in the end and yes, it was easier to remove the paper but bits still got trapped in the stitches.
It looked like this.
In the end I think I had an eureka moment and I decided to turn the piece around. I used a solid fabric and you couldn’t tell which side was up.
This is what the back looked like. Finishing the sketching
Now it was time to finish up the piece by adding some fancy stitching, mostly zigzag stitch, on different areas.
You will need some stabiliser on the back for this step but that’s fine because if you don’t get it all out it doesn’t matter as it will be hidden.
So pin the paper to the back of the piece.
So I went over all lines and added zig zag stitches here and there and also some straight stitches too.
So this is what the sketched looked like after I finished.
I’ll be using both sketches to make a brush case holder in next tutorial.
