I recently had a little porch added to the front of my house which is perfect for storing shoes and coats. Mostly the shoes are on a rack but I also have a crate full and some of the lighter weight summer shoes were getting scuffed so the ideal solution was a range of different sized (gradated) bags to keep them in.
I mostly used the logcabin patchwork technique for the decoration and again these had a gradation, showing a gradual change in colour with an interuption. An additional  interuption in the bags was the third one which was landscape rather than portrait, had buttons rather than a felt ball and had Louisa's gorgeous little bear instead of the coloured patchwork.

 

Bag number 2
The patchwork on this bag changes from pink to purple with a green interuption.The leftover from Louisas fabric was used to line the flap.

Bag number 1
The colour changes from orange to brown  using both Louisa's and Kathy's fabric alongside some check from a previous project, with a flash of Ruths turquoise fabric as an interuption and lining

The bear makes a good contrast to the other decorations and the fastening is my four buttons rather than a felted ball.

Bag number 4 is bigger (sorry no individual picture) and the fabrics change from green to blue with a rust brown interuption. You will notice that I sort of made up my own version of the log cabin patchwork and made 2 squares in the middle. I'm not sure what happened here but I was doing this on holiday without a pattern and it ended up like this!

"Valve" phone pocket

The secret to the valve pocket is a piece of flat plastic, the kind they make notebook covers from. I enclose it in a fabric chamber, fold it in half and sew the pocket together with the plastic trapped in its folded position. Because it wants to unfold, it acts like a spring. A piping strip along the back of the pocket ensures the phone falls into the fold if the pocket is tipped upsidedown.

Zebras

Mum just added me to the blog, so I thought I'd better post something! Here is some zebra-patterned fabric we found in a store - every garment we tried on was covered in zebras. 

Also, here is one fun little project I got to be a part of a few weeks ago. I painted this hard hat for a project my instructor was involved in. I drew foliage and butterflies all over it and then added a bit of colour to it.

Kathy Remembers Pender

 I decided to make a bag to fit our thermos, with a second compartment for extra cups and a biscuit tin (of course!) It needed to be tall, with a drawstring at the top, have a comfortable strap, and be an easy size to carry over the shoulder. Jerry carried it on a walk a few weeks ago and said it was comfortable. 

I managed to include every technique we had experimented with on Pender, in some form or other. I wasn't very successful with the "gradation" concept, other than the yellow triangles on the woven strap (using the tablet/card-weaving technique) definitely vary greatly in size (unintentionally, however!) The "interruption" comes in the bright orangey-red in the small accents: the felted ball knob on the teapot lid, the strip on each side of the woven strap, the Rooibos tea packet on one end, and the shoelace drawstring. The red was meant to clash a bit with the purple batik background. Can't seem to resist including primary colours.

Several coffee and tea packets were used for pockets and decoration (sort of a foil-plastic which is stitchable). Lesley's buttons are the steam from the teapot. One of Mary's rose leaf "poundings" sits just below the strip-pieced cups. Now I think of each of you whever we carry tea and biscuits along on a walk. I also think of you when I have tea at home, as the leaf-project became a tea cozy. 

Ruth Remembers Pender

My new handbag was the second project woven on my new 4-shaft loom. The twill changes direction in strips that graduate in width. The warp is interrupted by a few purple threads among the black. 

I loved using the set of fabrics we contributed plus a purple for foundation pieced straps. I wove in the same colours as an accent across the bag and the buttons finish it off nicely!

I'm very proud of an invisible special feature I designed: a phone "valve" pocket. I can slip my phone into my bag without having to open velcro or a zip or a press stud but I can turn the bag right upside down and my phone can't fall out. I can reach in quickly with one hand to grab it when it rings. I added one of these pockets to another favourite bag and to a friend's favourite bag. She finds it very useful as she only has one hand and answering her phone in a hurry has always been problematic. :)

Louisa Remembers Pender

Our magic week on the island is already "a long time ago", but didn't we have fun!

Just a note:  after we got home I took advantage of the late summer garden and did a bit of flower pounding.  (Found it was quite a bit easier when I had some actual flowers!)

I haven't decided what to do with this piece yet.

The tin works just fine, but it ain't very pretty!

I had a hard time deciding on a project for our challenge.  Just couldn't come up with a specific purpose bag no matter how hard I tried.  Then one day I realized that I was using a naked tomato tin as a tool caddy in the sewing room.  Surely a cover for that would fit the criteria!





I found a piece of unbleached cotton in the right size and used it as a base.  Then I took pieces of the fabrics that we shared with each other and put a fusible web on the back (I used Steam A Seam).   I cut the fabrics into strips -- one vertically, the other horizontally -- and wove them together.  The finished weaving was fused onto the piece of muslin.

The colours of this are a bit muted, but they did remind me of a certain Pender Island dessert.....

The weaving worked quite well, so I repeated the process with the fabric Kathy sent and a creamy batik I found in my cupboard.  I liked that weaving even better than the first one, so I continued the project using that one.

I added trim using Ruth's fabric and bound the top and bottom edge.  Then I sewed on Lesley's buttons.  I wanted to add more buttons, so I dug into my button collection -- would you believe I could find only one clear button that would match?   The sleeve has a loose facing on the inside at the top -- that's to hide the inevitable sharp edge that my can opener always leaves.

I'm not sure why I sewed the buttons on right where the seam falls!

Isn't that a great improvement!  I was so pleased with my pretty tin that I used the rest of that woven piece to make a coordinating thread catcher.  This one has a closed bottom, so I guess it counts as a real bag!

The brown cuff on this one used the other piece of fabric, so between the two containers I've used all the shared bits.  

Now my sewing room is better organized and more attractive.  And every time I use my tools I remember our holiday.

Louisa's quilt block

Here is a sneak peek at my quilt block that will appear in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks magazine.    (I didn't post the picture on Facebook because I don't think I'm supposed to "publish" it before the magazine comes out next week.)

Here is "Wildflower".

There are 100 different quilt blocks in the magazine.  And this is issue #13 -- so that's a lot of quilt blocks that have been published this way.

If you happen to come across this on the newsstand -- I'd like you to pick up a copy, open it to page 55, then make some appropriate exclamations.  (You don't need to buy it, unless you really NEED 100 quilt blocks in your library!)

I'm also making a quilt using this block.  The quilt will be in a different magazine, coming out in August.  (Quilts from Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks).  The fabric for the quilt is being supplied by a fabric company -- this is rather fun, except that they still have not sent the fabric I need for the border of the quilt, and I have a deadline to have the quilt completed, quilted, bound, and delivered to Colorado before the end of May.   I have been checking my mailbox daily looking for that last piece of fabric.  When it wasn't here today I sent off a note to the magazine editor who has promised to "look into it".