Peace Dove bags

Here are the three peace dove grocery / tote bags all done and ready to go to the fund raiser at my church. The auction was last evening. They are now in the hands of their new owners, hopefully to provide helpful service and a gentle reminder of peace.

Little practical things and more quilting

Some of my studio time this weekend was used for a couple of needed practical things. I made a padded bag for my new car navigation assistant. I made the standard writstlet that I have been making and added a center divider, so that cord would not scratch the screen. I also put a layer of quilt batting in the bag to provide cushion.




I also realized that I needed one more cloth grocery bag, so made one out of the leftover bedroom curtain material (that I have been getting a lot of mileage out of!). I used the basic Morse bag dimensions. This one does not a have a flat bottom like most of my other bags, but I think that's OK.



With those two projects done I then turned my attention to finishing the quilt for Andrew & Sarah. As you can see from this picture, the pins are out. I finished the machine quilting yesterday then added the binding and did the hand sewing last evening.





I added the label for the back this morning. Just the basic message, who it is made for, with love, my name and the date. Now I can't wait to give this to them. I think it will happen sometime in February, we may be making a visit then.

Smaller groocery bag

I have noticed that the baggers at the grocery store will fill up my cloth bags to the max. This makes the bags quite heavy to lug in and out of the car and then into the house. I have made a bag pattern that is wider and shorter than the ones I have been making, see my tutorial. You can see the size comparison in these two pictures.
The pattern is 18 1/4 inches wide and 16 1/4 tall. I cut out a 2 1/4 inch square at each side for the bottom. The handles were cut 4 inches wide and 26 inches long. Since the bag is wider I spaced the handles 6 1/2 inches apart. The assembly of the bag is the same as in the tutorial. For the one in this picture I added a 6 inch band at the bottom to give it more strength.

3 Peace Grocery bags

I have made 3 peace grocery bags that I will donate to a fund raiser auction at my church. The bags are all made from denim. The peace symbols are a collage of small squares of fabric tacked down with stitch witchery and then sewn down. I got the peace symbol pattern that I used for the two with the wider symbol from here. I like the frayed edge look of this for a peace symbol, it seems appropriate for something as scrappy to attain as peace.

Here are the 3 of them modeling in the back of my car. They are so cute I have named them, from left to right: Green peas pieced peace, Purple polka dot pieced peace, and Flower power pieced peace.

Each bag has a pocket on the back side, as seen on the back of the Green Peas bag.

So here's to peace and saving our planet in ways little and large.

Cloth shopping bag that folds into a pocket

I have been wanting to make a smaller cloth bag that folds into it's own pocket and would be small enough to carry in my purse. I made a cloth bag in the dimensions of a morsbag (18 by 20 inches), see the directions here.

I then added a 7 inch fully lined square for the pocket. Place the pocket at the center bottom of the bag.


When you want to fold it up: fold the bag in thirds lengthwise, then tuck the handles down and fold the bag into thirds again, and then turn it inside it's own little pocket.


Pop it in your purse and you are ready for avoiding plastic bags in almost any setting!

More grocery bags for Andrew and Sarah

My son and his wife requested 2 more grocery bags, so they could use them for all of their groceries. Good for them. I had a little bit left of the olive and lettuce fabric, so stretched it as best I could. Now they have 4 coordinating bags, see the others here and here.

I wonder what it would take for the US to pass a ban or tax on plastic bags as has been done in Ireland?
see story here