Monthly Archives: February 2013

The Quilted Tote Bag

When I first started using my Quilt Frame I took yards of fabric and quilted them for practice. Around the same time my friend’s daughter was starting college and she asked me if I would make a tote bag for her to carry books and a laptop. I had been thinking about making tote bags with my yards of quilted fabric, and thus we have the Kerryn Bag!

The bag has pockets on the outside and more on the inside. It has a button and tab closure which is easy to add on after you have put the bag together. These bags have been very popular and I often get requests for them.

If you would like to make this bag, I will be teaching a class at Quilters Common in Wakefield, MA on September 27, 2013. The pattern for the bag is currently for sale at Quilters Common, and also in my Craftsy store.

To make this bag you will have to use a Jeans needle and have a machine that is comfortable sewing through several layers of quilted fabric. To make the corners of the bag you need to sew through four layers, which means 6 layers at the seams! If your machine is happy to do that for you then you might enjoy making your own tote bag.

I usually have enough fabric for a little purse or a cosmetic bag, or both!!

Bet you can’t make just one

Pillow Cases!! Never buy a pillow case again. I made these using a couple of kits from Peggy Anne’s Quilting and Sewing Company, and also one to match the curtains in the room.

The Orange and Green Striped case is actually named after me and you may purchase this kit and have your own Patrice Pillow Case. Yes, I do love orange and green. The kit was a surprise from Peggy Anne. When the package arrived I was wearing my orange shirt with a green sweater! Yes I was!!!

The best way to make these pillow cases is with the roll up method. If you add the piping and you are finishing with the French seams I would suggest using a jeans needle and you may need the height compensating tool!

Bouquet WIP

I have finished the Bouquet Quilt. I used Kaffe Fassett Russian Rose for the binding. I am very happy with this quilt!

I machine sew my bindings. This is a modern quilt done by machine. My thinking is why stop using the machine when you are finishing the binding?

The binding was first sewn to the front of the quilt, then I stitched along the edge of the binding on the back of the quilt with my edge foot. I used a dark gray thread for the top thread and a tan thread in the bobbin, which is less visible on the top of the quilt. Sometimes I sew the binding to the back of the quilt and roll it to the front and sew along the edge on the front of the quilt.

From January 27, 2013:

Here is an update on the Bouquet Quilt. It has been so cold lately that I have been happy to stay in the house working on this quilt! I finished quilting it yesterday. All it needs now is the binding!

Posted January 20, 2013:

Yesterday in the mail I received 3 yards of new Kaffe Fassett fabric: ocher palm fan, blue field bouquet, and red suzani. I was a bit disappointed because the yard of field bouquet was not cut correctly. Whoever was cutting it just was not taking in the entire yard and seeing that it really is a panel and not regular yardage. If cut correctly you will get 12 bouquet blocks. Four of the blocks in my yard had been clipped off on one end, with just a sliver of four more at the other end of the yard.

What to do about this? Lemonade from Lemons. I do have 12 blocks, but four of them are different with wider borders than the other 8 blocks. I think this will make the quilt more interesting!

If the fabric had been cut correctly I would have said “how pretty” and added it to my stash … but I had to spring into immediate action to save this fabric!

Here are photos of some of the blocks. The sashing will be a gray Moda fabric which will add a rich tone to this quilt.

The Lorax Plan

I have been putting a few quick quilts together to practice on my new quilt machine and I found myself at FatQuarterShop.com this morning looking at Dr. Seuss fabric panels.

I ended up putting a quick quilt plan together based on my Grinch Quilt. I picked out the fabrics to go with the colors in the panel and once I get started putting this quilt top together I will improvise with borders around each panel block.

What I did was copy and paste images of the fabrics in a Microsoft Word document to see how everything will look together. How do you plan your quilts?

Here is a picture of the Grinch Quilt. I will use a similar approach for the Lorax Quilt.