Quilted Totes

After making the little daisy mug rugs, I still had some pink daisy fabric left.  I wondered if I could put together another little something with the leftover pieces.  I decided on a quilted tote bag.  I found lots of different inspirations for them and liked parts of this one pattern.  I settled on a wonky log cabin pattern and quilted along as I went.  I love that kind of quilting.  

The finished size wasn't really a concern of mine while piecing.  I was thinking a rectangle might be good, but I also knew I could just add more strips.  The first one ended up at about 12.5" by 10.5".  The second was 13" by 9.25".

After making my fronts, I decided to just keep the back plain black.  I added batting to each part and quilted them using a hot pink free motion design.  Then I sewed front to back at the sides and bottom  edge, then formed the bottom.  

My surplus of bottom weight material came in handy for the straps and lining.   I also added an inside pocket and made it the length of the one long side.  The straps I sort of followed the quilted tote pattern in that it called for each strap to be 5" x 26".  It's a pretty long strap.  I also made a tab 6.5" by 2.5" for the top of the bag.

The two bags were constructed at pretty much the same time.  I was often two steps ahead on one, then the other.  The first bag was almost done and I showed it to my husband.  Right away he noticed the large black strips on the front of the wonky log cabins and how it stood out too much.  Somehow I had missed that.  I think part of it was the fact I was involved in the construction at that point.  In addition, much of my log cabin had been folded under for the bottom.  This made the top part more prominent.

After considering a few ways to potentially "fix" the big black strips, I decided to add a pink daisy.  I researched a few different options for constructing a fabric flower.  I found one out of ribbon that seemed to be nice.  The one video tutorial I found used hot glue and paper.  As I wanted to have it all washable, I opted to stitch everything down to a felt circle.  I enjoyed learning about this new construction.  Each pedal is shaped out of small 3" pieces of ribbon.  Then the base of the ribbon is scrunched together to give it the pedal shape.