I've recently been on a workshop with the Australian designer Gail Pan at Poppy Patch here in the UK, and the project I chose was the Dilly Dally Bag. I had always struggled with needleturn applique, so this was an excellant opportunity to practise this technique under the expert guidance of Gail. I'd picked fabrics from my stash, from the Super Bloom collection by Laundrey Basket Quilts. The bag pattern has a small hand embroidered piece of fabric which is appliqued to the front of the bag, which I stitched using a DMC embroidery thread...
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...the flower staems are made from bias strips, and Gail demonstrated how to make these using a Clover bias tape maker. I'd had one of these for ages, but didn't really know how to use it properly. Having Gail on hand to demonstrate this was great, and I was really pleased with my results. The bird, flowers and leaves have been needleturn appliqued, and stitched onto a low volume print from the same fabric collection. The background has then been layered with a piece of bamboo wadding and hand quilted with a DMC perle thread. Some buttons have been added to one of the flowers.....
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...I decided to make mine a project bag with a zipper closeure rather than a tote bag, as I thought that would be more useful for my sewing projects. To maje the main part of my project bag, I used a piece of ByAnnie Soft and Stable wadding which I quilted in a simple cross hatch design. The top edge of a piece of ByAnnie vinyl was neatened with a wide binding and a zipper was added. The two pieces of wadding and the vinyl were then stitched together and the raw edges neatened with a double fold binding - this was made with 3 fabrics for a scrappy effect. I used the Clover bias tape maker to make a fabric pull to add to the zipper head. This is a super project bag, and the clear vinyl means I can easily see what I've got tucked inside it...
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...this picture shows the back of the project bag. This was really simple to make, and I'll definately make more of these for keeping my projects in. They can be made whatever size you like, and I might make a couple of smaller ones too.
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