The essentials shoulder bag....

I've been wanting a little bag to hold the essentials when ducking out or going to a concert....you know keys, purse, glasses, phone, tissues and stuff. It was only one of those 'wanty' kind of desires so I wasn't deliberately looking for one but then it occurred to me that I could make one.

I grabbed a metal jeans zip from Spotlight, the size of the zip and my wallet determining the size of bag. Then set about setting more of my triangle binding off-cuts into 2.5" linen squares. As I was using scraps of linen I only made as many 1/2 square triangles as the squares I could cut which was 36. This gave me 18 blocks per side and I added a another linen strip to the bottom to make it a little deeper. I ended up with roughly two 9" squares. Then vertically straight line quilted each piece, set in the zip, made the bag using this method (but without the tabs) and set in two little fabric loops with D-rings to take the hardware.

The hardware clasps are from Bunnings which are quite study and also available in brass to match the teeth of the zip and the D-rings. I made the strap in a similar way to how I make lanyards, joining 2.5" wide scraps, folding in towards each other and top stitching.

The lining is about the last piece I have of some fox fabric I purchased last year from Spotlight.

Of course as soon as I shared the results someone asked for one too....perhaps I should learn to make two of everything!

The flying geese backpack....

After creating my flying geese knitting bag made from the triangles leftover from joining binding strips, Miss R asked if I'd make her something similar as a backpack for her laptop.

I made a 15" square of blocks, gave it a linen base and set in some tabs to thread the straps through. The top drawstring fabric is wider to also take the thicker straps.

Whilst it looks a bit like a beach bag because it's holding text books and not the intended laptop, she's delighted nonetheless.

A bit of fun sewing and playing with scraps some of which I'm completely responsible for creating and others gifted from kind sewing friends.

Scrappy little drawstring bags.....

Whilst working on something else recently I had an urge to make a little patchwork bag out of 2.5" squares. It turned out really sweetly, so I decided to make another....only bigger. That one turned out even better and because I had some up-cycled leather cord I finished that one off first.

Then I whizzed into the city and grabbed some cording to finish off the first one.

Then a few weeks ago, Clare gifted me some little triangle off-cuts that she'd saved for me. They were really pretty low volume pastel colours left over from a baby quilt. I couldn't get flying geese out of my head so I decided to use the triangles as scrappy flying geese. I placed a triangle onto opposite corners of a 2.5" white square lining up the edges of the triangle with the corners and stitched an extremely scant seam. Then trimmed down the middle to yield two 2" 1/2 square triangles. It wasted a little bit of fabric and some were a bit wonky. However in the main I didn't bother trimming them square and just went for it, piecing them together into two 12.5" square blocks of 4 pairs across by 7 down.

Then during the night I decided I needed a new knitting bag for a girl's knitting weekend. I got up super early the next morning (after dreaming about how I was going to do it all night!) and quickly made another drawstring bag out of the scrappy flying geese blocks. I placed a piece of left over batting in between a calico backing and straight line quilted vertical lines then finished it off with lining and striped casing.

I love how it turned out and so does my daughter who has asked for one of her very own but bigger for her laptop. Lucky I save all my own binding corners and have other sewing friends who give me theirs. The zip-lock bags are about to be upturned again!

The original pattern I used for the drawstring bags is a tutorial by Ayumi on her Pink Penguin blog. It gives instructions for the small sized bag I made and I've just re-sized it from there.