My Creative Space

I've been a bit slack on the blogging and making front lately; currently I am hand sewing the binding on James' quilt.  I thought I would finish it off in my first attempt at machine binding at last Saturday's Melbourne Modern Quilt Guild Sit and Sew Day, but let's just say I won't be repeating that anytime soon.

What is currently front of mind is the Sewing Circle Tote, sew-a-long that the ladies of the Guild are all getting excited about.  Elizabeth Hartman of Oh Fransson has put out a pattern for a cute and practical bag that is just the thing for all your crafty bits and pieces.  You can see this great bag over here.

Lovely Cath is hosting this project and we have a schedule starting the week of 5 May, going for 8 weeks.  This is going to be interesting as I have a few things on in this period but I love a challenge.  As with most crafty projects, a lot of the fun is in selecting the fabrics.  As this bag calls for a fairly solid fabric, I've picked an Echino cotton/linen blend.  While the pattern shows the bag in  textured solid fabric with print contrasts, I've gone for a print and will use solids for the patchwork pockets.  So here's some of my selection:

The pink train fabric is for the bag exterior, the chevrons are for the lining and the straps were going to be made from the green and white ovals, but I've been having second thoughts about this.  So I asked Stos, who thought that a green and white spot. matching the green train carriage, would look better.  Well, this was practically an order to go fabric shopping and after a visit to a reliable haunt, managed to come up with the material on the lower left.  So I am pretty well sorted for supplies and might just head off to start cutting up in readiness for kickoff.

For more creative spaces, head over here.