" I've Started, so I'll Finish"

A bit of a misnomer actually, as it's more like I've finished, so I'll start something else, finish it, and start another something else.

I finished the Scrappy Trip (see this post) and gave it my daughter for her birthday.  She was absolutely delighted with it, and immediately posted it on Facebook for all her friends to see, who answered with comments saying that they remembered her wearing some of the garments that I'd cut up to make it with "way back when".
My daughter has recently taken up cycling as a way of keeping fit.  When I saw this fabric I knew I had to make her something with it.  A bag seemed to be the quickest and most useful thing I could think of and so whipped this up the other afternoon as an extra gift.

I used Jeni's tutorial from In Color Order, the one I used here to make a lined drawstring bag, for the basic construction of it, just adapting it to make a tote bag.  I used one length of outer fabric, cut it in half so that the bikes wouldn't be upside down on the back of the bag, spray-basted some batting onto each piece and then quilted it with straight lines about 1" apart before stitching it together along the bottom.  The lining was cut from an olive green sheet and I made some handles which I lined and quilted also.  I sewed the handles to the turnings at the top of the bag before sandwiching them between the outer and the lining.  I obviously didn't need to make the channel for a drawstring so missed out that bit, and finished the bag with a line of stitching around the top edge.  I love Jeni's construction method and shall be using it again to make more bags.

I've also finished piecing a mini quilt this week.

The pattern is from Miss Rosie's Quillt Co. and is called Three Barns, but I've re-sized it to be 20" square and have called it Five Star, which I think suits it a lot better.  I shall be hand quilting this one.