Hello hello! Welcome to Part 1 of the last ( 🙁 ) full quilty bag post in the Quilt Me A Bag series! So far, this has been an amazing adventure and out of all the posts, I’m probably MOST excited for this pair of posts as it means we are just around the corner from the pattern release for this bag as well! Hooray! What pattern am I talking about?! Why, only the Creative’s Tote of course! 🙂
Crystal has had an absolute blast creating this quilted Creative’s Tote! So much so that she swamped me with sooooo many photos, of both the process AND the final tote, that I felt this bag was THAT epic that it needed to be spread over two posts! (And trust me, the final result is WELL worth the wait!!). So, this first post for the Creative’s Tote shows the process and techniques Crystal used to create her quilted bag.
More on all that gorgeousness in a minute, but first, let’s recap all the bags we have looked at thus far –
- Post 1: Quilt Me A Bag Series
- Post 2: Quilt Me A Bag – Roll With It Tote
- Post 3: Quilt Me A Bag – Cleo Everyday Wallet
- Post 4: Quilt Me A Bag – Stand Up & Tote Notice
- Post 5: Quilt Me A Bag – Carry All Flexi Clutch
The Creative’s Tote is a beautifully large tote bag that has been designed specifically with the creative maker in mind. If you sew, knit, crochet, quilt, patchwork, scrapbook etc etc etc. (the list goes on!), then this bag has been designed for YOU! It is a design-your-own pattern, with several pocket options, both inside and outside the tote, allowing you to completely customise it to suit your needs.
If not for craft-related materials, then it would also be a great bag for carrying books, your laptop, overnight essentials, your daily essentials if you’re someone that has to carry everything except the kitchen sink with them, a baby bag, a school bag…. SO many possibilities!!!
As you know, the Quilt Me A Bag series is in partnership with the super talented Alison Glass as well as the quilter/bag-maker Crystal Harrison (the maker behind all these amazing bags). Please, please, please pop over to their pages (links at the end) and give them some love as this series wouldn’t be happening without their fantastic support!
The sponsor for this pair of posts is the generous Kylie from Betty Box Pleat, who has generously donated a…… Hmm, actually, I think I’ll keep that a surprise for the next post! In the meantime, you can find Kylie’s shop here – make sure you go and check out all her bling bling hardware (and then some)!
Creative’s Tote
To create this quilty Creative’s Tote, Crystal used prints from both the Sun Print 2015 and 2017 collections, as well as some other Alison Glass-goodies she had in her stash including panels from the Ex Libris Collection.
She used a combination of quilting techniques to create the gorgeously unique, quilted main outer pockets as follows –
- Paper pieced diamonds using the Electric Diamond foundation paper piecing pattern by Sariella (a free pattern which you can find here).
- Simple piecing, joining the paper pieced diamonds to other Alison Glass prints, to make full panels…. LOVE!!
How gorgeous do these look even before being cut to size using the pattern piece?!?
For the outer panels Crystal cut several 5″ (13cm) squares out (all at once too – what a time saver!), paired them right sides together, two at a time, and stitched around all four sides using a 1/4″ (0.6cm) seam allowance (yes, that’s all FOUR sides). “Trust me! Do it!” she says…. LOL 🙂
She then cut each fully stitched square into quarters diagonally to create four 3″ (7.5cm) half square triangles. Brilliant!
Too easy and so much faster than cutting and stitching individually!
Along with the half square triangles, she also added some 3″ (7.5cm) squares to the mix to create the beautifully pieced outer panels (complete with a solid hot pink coordinate across the bottom for the inside of the outer pockets!).
And of course, Crystal being Crystal, she quilted each and every square and triangle individually, which gives an AH-mazing effect I think!!!
Progress shot of how one of the outer panels/outer pocket combination is coming together! O-M-G!!!!
If you look closely, you’ll see she also chose to do some free motion quilting around the moth and butterfly on the Ex Libris panels…
For the gusset, Crystal chose to stitch 5″ squares together using a 1/4″ (0.6cm) seam allowance. She recommends making the pieced strip of fabric slightly longer than the pattern piece because it will ‘shrink’ a little during quilting.
To quilt, she used a straight stitch with a stitch length of around 3.0mm. Her tip for this part – “just have fun with it!”. Once quilted, she trimmed the panel to size using the pattern piece.
And next is the assembly of the bag….. Which will be in the next post in a couple of days time! (Sorry! #sorrynotsorry 🙂 ).
Links
You can find the Creative’s Tote pattern here: https://www.andriedesigns.com/product/creatives-tote/
You can find Alison’s website here: https://alisonglass.com/
You can find Crystal’s Instagram page here: https://www.instagram.com/tayahdesigns/
You can find Betty Box Pleat here: https://www.bettybp.com.au/andrie-designs/
You can find the earlier posts in this series here –
- Post 1: Quilt Me A Bag Series
- Post 2: Quilt Me A Bag – Roll With It Tote
- Post 3: Quilt Me A Bag – Cleo Everyday Wallet
- Post 4: Quilt Me A Bag – Stand Up & Tote Notice
- Post 5: Quilt Me A Bag – Carry All Flexi Clutch
Feel free to leave us a comment on what you think of Crystal’s Creative’s Tote so far! We are absolutely LOVING it and can’t wait to show you the finished bag!!! Are you loving it as much as we are??
See you next time for Part 2! Lisa x
WOW, it’s looking amazing so far…can’t wait to see part 2 and watch it being completed.
Hugs
Naomi
Absolutely stunning!
I’m in love with the fabric on the sides with the butterflies! looking forward to seeing the finished product!
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Love the tip for sewing all the edges together to get your triangles just a genius idea