Firetruck & Tools Tote Bag

The birthday boy is also into tools and Handy Manny, in addition to his love of firetrucks.  I thought a quilted gift bag might be fun, especially one that combined two of his favorite things.

One reason I enjoy making quilted tote bags is that I can try out different quilting methods on a small scale.  For this bag, because I was using two different prints, I thought using black and grey as accents on both sides would help tie things together. I used the slice and insert method for adding the strips of grey. 

Wavy quilting lines is something I had never tried for quilting.  Using my walking foot and winging it seemed to work well. I really like the effect on this bag. I used grey on the predominately grey side and black on the other. I did stick with black on the black bottom fabric and decided to use grey on the small grey strip too. 

The tool fabric was leftover from a baby quilt; I did purchase a fat quarter of the firetruck fabric.  For the lining I found the light denim to be a nice match and had just enough. When I heard the birthday boy was into Handy Manny and searched, I found this great ribbon.  I knew it would arrive later in the week.  The first steps were making the front and back and quilting each piece. For the whole project, my goal was to make sure the bag would appeal to a boy and I wasn't sure where the ribbon would come into play. Finally I decided to just use it in the lining, like a little surprise. I added ribbon onto a pocket too.

The finished size is about 15" wide by 10" tall with a 5" depth from a 2" boxed corner.