Tracy's Totebag

I made this for my cousin to commemorate the wonderful visit my sister and I had with her last month in northern New Mexico.
The batik is from our Grandma's "Travel Room", where there were artifacts and bits of folk art up on the walls from the countries she had visited. Tracy always loved this souvenir fabric from Indonesia....

I'm still dreaming of Wagon Mound...

...but have actually been very busy working on a little professional assignment that suddenly plopped into my lap, and I am not allowed to blog about it. Wish I could....you'll hopefully see it someplace special next year!

The White Tote...Finished!

I added a little more embroidery to the front this morning before finishing up this project.

The flowers along the left side in the big white patch are the same as the flowers in the above right. The tote front needed this balance.

For the back I chose some lovely natural linen.

This was also the fabric for the straps. The lining is green cotton lame, but you can't really see that.

And here it is, finished. I wish the circle was a bit more perfect....but this IS handmade, so that's o.k. When this tote is actually being used, it won't be an issue.
Overall, I would say that doing that close quilting on a patch (the circle) before piecing it in was a success, and I will use that concept again. I also like this tote's shape, and the ease of its construction. My home-printed white floral fabric was fun to use as well...all in all, making this was a very pleasant experience.

Now I need to take a few days off and attend to the tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes.
Salsa, anyone?

White Tote Front...Embellishment Finished

This project was all about texture, repetition, and rhythm. Because the color scheme was limited to white, beige, and green (with a fleck of yellow and a half a fleck of red), this gave me the chance to emphasize these other design elements.
Crazy quilting gives us so much scope for pushing on different aspects of design; it's one reason I love it so much.

There were lots and lots more French knots.

I appliqued this gorgeous lace motif to act as a seam treatment. Talk about getting a lot of "bang for my buck"! This took no time at all to sew on, gave me the texture and made the transition between patches that I wanted, and repeated the lace 3D flower element that is on the tote farther up.

Embroidered rick rack is another way to get plenty of detail with minimal sewing. Here it is repeating the scalloped edge that the lace and chainstitching provides all over this tote front. The more saturated green gives the circle some punch too, along with that line of 4 mm silk ribbon.

When the tote is assembled and finished, that "neckline" will be symmetrical and the circle won't look lopsided at the top the way it does now.

This has been a balm to do after the Burner Bag! I'll sew it up tomorrow....

A Simple Shopping Tote

Gee, it was great to get such a positive response to my Autumn Tote. Thanks, everyone!!

This next tote was an entirely different project....fast, functional, and geared to lots of everyday wear and tear. It is for my son's girlfriend to use when she goes grocery shopping, so it had to be sturdy and not have a bunch of loose embellishments or beads that could pull off.

I bought a heavy-duty, ready-made denim tote at my local Craft Warehouse; nice and cheap. Because Esther likes Oriental design, I decided to use some of my authentic Japanese indigo fabric to go with the denim.

All I did was sew strips of these fabrics together to make a band, which I machine appliqued to the tote front. I sewed in the ditch afterwards for added stability.
Then I added just a hint of embroidery, plus 14 beads total, and voila:

Nothing flashy but kinda pretty...I think these would make wonderful last minute-style gifts. Of course, that band could be of crazy quilting and that would be great.

Here's a detail of my minimal embellishment. The thread was a lovely surprise in the mail from Susan...it is Sassa Lynn fine perle, and even in denim it was nice stitching....
So I will send this north to Esther and hope she fills it many, many times with good healthy food.

Speaking of which, here is what is waiting for my attention....

These are the Comice variety...ultra, ultra sweet. This picture shows about a half of our crop this year. And that's not counting the Boscs! Or the Asian pears....which are bearing heavily for the first time this year.
Anybody have any ideas for storing/preserving Asian pears?

Autumn Tote, Finished!

After driving to Seattle....


...to help my son move (with his girlfriend's assistance).....


...and picking pears (the first of many bagfuls)....


...and helping Robert prepare the corn for freezing....


....and going into Portland last night to see Crowded House, those smashing gents from New Zealand....

Here they are playing my absolute favorite Crowded House song, "Pineapple Head". They also did "Distant Sun", "Weather With You", and of course, "Don't Dream it's Over"....I've had a thing for Neil Finn for years.....

Well after and amidst all these shenanigans.....I finally got to finish my tote!

My favorite part of this project was playing with all the crazy fibers that went on as the fringe. The weaver's scraps and thrums that I had to select from was a treasure trove of so many neat and strange yarns. Towards the end I felt compelled to dip into my silk ribbon and variegated chenille stashes as well...

A veritable rat's nest here. But as I added the fibers one by one I felt like I was working on a painting..that was a new experience for me...it just was so absorbing.

Fringy fun! Color, texture, and value were my usual playmates.

Fringy excess.....but not enough to cover the sequins, who after all started this whole thing.

The finishing of the tote was a hoot too. For the hardware I ended up canabalizing an old Gucci bag that a friend had handed down to me, which I had named "The Barn" . The leather was completely shot, so I didn't feel too badly about doing in The Barn.

It is kind of ugly, isn't it? From the '60's, I think.

Gucci hardware on my tote, how cool is that?

And here it is, finished.
I am the drabbest dresser I know, so it is hard to imagine my actually using this. But believe it or not, I had my upcoming trip to Houston in mind when creating this tote. I'll be attending Quilt Market at the end of October, under the auspices of CQMagOnline (as a credentialed member of the Press, no less), and I know I will need a large tote for samples, notes, even my laptop would fit in here...

So what's next?...going to do a quick tote for my son's girlfriend and then another quilt for the Quilts of Valor project. It is such a good cause, and even this crazy fringy quilter can do a sane cotton bed quilt once in awhile.
And as I work I'll be happily humming from "Pineapple Head"......

And if you choose
to take that path

I will play you like a shark
and I'll clutch at your heart
I'll come flying like a spark
to enflame you...

Sequins and Fringe

I have a huge bag of the woven scraps and thrums (warp ends) from the weaver whose work I used in this bag. It is just a fabulous collection of strange fibers in great colors...so I decided to dig into that very large rat's nest and start creating a fringe element to help integrate those sequins.

Thanks for you comments, too...all opinions welcome! I have decided to keep the unadorned side of the bag "against the body" and just go for it on the one side.

Tying on the fringe has been so much fun...and when a project starts being fun again, then you know you are probably on the right track.

Have a look:

It's fun to use this stuff...most of it is boucle, which is hard to stitch with. But knotting it is great.

I'm developing little fringy areas....not going to cover the whole thing. I like the way the sequins peek out from under the fringe...and the fringe breaks up those too solid lines of sequins as well.

I'm not done yet, but am heading off to Seattle for today and tomorrow to help #1 son move from his summer sublet to the house he is renting with nine other engineering students for his senior year at U Dub.
That is going to be some zoo. (A well wired one, though.) My son's girlfriend has a single apartment and I have a feeling she is going to have a gentleman caller rather frequently!

More Sequins

I am highly ambivelent about how this is progressing, mostly because at this point I prefer the side of the tote that has no sequins on it at all!
I think I will leave that side unadorned...but the sequined side I will just have to junk up further. I'll bring out some threads and see what kind of damage I can do with them...

I might just be creating a little monster here. But nothing ventured, nothing gained!

More threads, more threads!....

In Praise of Sequins....I Think

My stash of sequins has been slowly building over the last few years, but I've just never hauled them all out and used them before. The Autumn Totebag with all its tweedy textures and rich colors seemed like a perfect foil for them.

So I've been sewing them on there, mostly matching the colors of the sequins to their backgrounds, at least so far. I don't exactly know where this is headed or if it is a mistake or not...but it is fun to play with them.

Pretty subtle here....

These stand out more. I wanted the hint of sequins, not obvious sequins.

I am so holding back with them!

Mmmmmm.....blue ones......

We're not approaching Bob Mackie territory here, are we?

The jury is out and has much deliberation to do as to whether this was a good idea or not...but meanwhile, I'll keep sewing on sequins. I sure wish I had more colors. This is an excellent excuse to go buy some more!

Autumn Tote, continued

Today I sewed the two sides to the bottom piece of the tote, added the two lining pieces, attached the magnet that will keep the totebag closed on the top, and quilted half of it. Not bad considering how much corn Robert and I harvested and put in the freezer this afternoon! Remember all that corn he planted?

The sides are sewn to the bottom, which is a piece of ultra suede I had forgotten I had.

For the lining, first of all, I ran out of that blue silk, so I am using it along the top edges of the bag where it will show the most. Secondly, I am sewing the lining on this way, in pieces, so that I will have the opening of the bag as a finished edge to work with. I don't care about finishing the side seams yet. I'll overlap the bottom edges and finish them by hand later.

This is why I needed those top edges sewn. Here is the back of my purse magnet, poked through the lining and the seam allowance (for durability).

Here the linings are flipped down into place, ready to be quilted to the sides of the tote. And my magnets are already "installed", so to speak. I will just quilt around them.

One side is quilted. The quilting melds all those loosey-goosey woven fabric pieces together and this creates a very durable tote side. Plus it feels really cool.

A close up of the quilted hand-woven fabric and velvet. Yum.

But frankly, this is where the real action is today. Lookit all that corn.....

Autumn Tote

I made such a mess this morning! But I've swept up and am left with two pieced tote sides, ready for their next step, which is joining them with a bottom piece in the middle, adding a lining to the back, and quilting them.

Ha Ha! To start things off I finally got my prize iron from the $100,000 Quilting Challenge out of its box where it has been languishing for two months since its arrival. (I am slow to take on new tools; the sewing machine I won is still in its box.) This is one great iron, the heavy artillery.

I used it to fuse some interfacing onto the backs of my two muslin tote foundation pieces.

Fast forward 2 1/2 hours and we have Side A....

And Side B...or as Dr. Suess wrote, "Thing One and Thing Two".
I want to class this up a little beyond my normal tote and am going to use leather on the bottom....and maybe go to the great folks at my local shoe repair shop and have them make me some leather handles for it, too!

New Tote Project

Thanks Everyone, for the very kind comments on my last post. You sure know how to make a stitcher feel good!

Ever hear of "PPD"? Not to make light of Post Partum Depression...but what I am referring to here is "Post Project Depression". I can't stand that void that comes when a major piece is finished, but I am not ready to embark on another one yet. So my personal cure for PPD is of course, The Tote Bag.
I have made zillions of them--I really should start an Etsy shop, just to clear them out of here--as a way not only to combat PPD, but also as a means to "refresh my palate"..or pallete...between big projects. It's a chance to not be so careful, to just have fun, and experiment.

This is a PPD Tote from about three and a half years ago....it was a blast to make; I was just going bananas with reweaving that silk ribbon. It's not at all practical for use, though...the ribbons would snag on everything...so I keep it in my sewing room with lots of loose fibers, yarns, etc. in it.

Here's a detail.....

And here is my pile of fabrics for the new tote, a cousin of the one above, I think. Those are hand-woven scraps from a weaver in San Francisco...I buy her scraps by the 1 gallon bag for $10 per bag. I've mixed in some velvets as I like the contrast in texture. Autumn is coming...

I will quilt this bag and not put much embroidery on it...but I do have this enticing and too large stash of sequins that could really be fun to spark this up with.
I mean, why not? ;-)