Sew-Together Bag – OccasionalPiece

Woohoo!! It’s a Mini Sew Together Bag!
A Mini Sew Together Bag has two pockets and is smaller than its big sister.

(Two Regular Sew Together Bags and Four Mini Sew Together Bags)

While I love my regular-sized bag, I really wanted one that was just a bit smaller.

UPDATE: I have re-written the pattern completely into a stand-alone pattern. It can be found on PayHip.

Here are some photos of the bag in process…and completed! For more information, refer to this post.

I was able to crank out four Minis in about a day and half; I think it went so quickly because I had already made a couple of the bigger bags. Before I wrote the new pattern, I had to refer to The Quilt Barn’s Tutorial when I became stuck.

Now everything is included in the pattern.

For the tab ends, I didn’t necessarily slide them all the way to the end of the zipper before I sewed them on (and by the way, refer to the pattern for an easier way to make them, rather than the tutorial). Instead I played with the tab ends a bit, sliding them up and down the zipper, seeing how big of a “handle” I wanted. Most of the time I placed the zipper about halfway into the tab end.

And that shiny thing in front? For adjunct teachers who use white board markers, you know what a mess the eraser makes in your tote bags. The Community College administrators where I teach give us the white board markers free at the beginning of the school year, but we buy our own erasers. If you leave yours in the classroom, you can kiss it goodbye, so we carry the erasers (and markers) back and forth to class.

To keep my sew together bag clean, I made a clear vinyl pouch, sewing a self-binding fabric strip around the top to hold my eraser. The dimensions were 7″ by 6 1/2″ of clear vinyl; sew two folded strips along the 7″ sides, then with WST, sew the side seams. Yes, I did a tiny “boxing in” of the bottom corner to accommodate the eraser.

Mini Sew Together, fully loaded for school. But this would also be great stacked with hexies, or other smaller hand-sewing projects. Because the Mini is a smaller size, it will fit into…smaller places!

I also made a matching tote bag to go with this for a gift, as California will be phasing out our plastic grocery bags. I used my Grocery Bag Tutorial, found *here.* The usual request applies: don’t embed the pattern on your blog, refer your friends back to OPQuilt.com to download their own. And if you Pin anything from this post, please use the correct post address. These little Minis are fun to make and fun to use, and sew up quickly for a cute and fun Christmas gift!

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In case you are looking for the Circle EPP Quilt-A-Long, because I gave you two renditions of the block in November, we are taking a vacation in December. Merry Christmas all you EPP-ers and we’ll see you in January.

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I get my zippers from ZipperStop in NYC. There are other places to locate good quality, inexpensive zippers mentioned on other quilty blogs and in the comments (so check them out), but I can highly recommend Zipperstop, having placed several orders from them. The zippers arrive quickly, and in the color range I like and I like the prices.

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I present to you: THE SEW-TOGETHER BAG!! If you are from my quilt guild and are looking for the link to buy the pattern, it is *here.* Yes, you have to sign into Craftsy and make up a name and a pin number. But there are a lot of great things on Craftsy. Then open up your computer and link to The Quilt Barn Sew-A-Long for the pattern. They go together.

I have seen about eight million of these online and on Instagram and get putting it off because, my-gosh-oh-golly, it has four zippers. And binding!

And all those pockets! Okay, I’m here to tell you that you will survive to sew another day. And that Michelle, of Sew Demented, has figured out easy ways to construct pockets.

The binding was No Big Deal–easy if you’ve done quilt binding, and if you follow The Quilt Barn’s directions.

So, jump in! The water’s fine.

And now I have to talk about the weather. We’ve been having a heat wave. This is after the crazy rain storm that took out lots of trees in my neighborhood, and ruined concrete drainage ditches in my park.

Tuesday, coming home, I saw these beautiful clouds, a rarity in our area. Then it got all dark and my phone had this screen:

The power went out…no sewing. So I did non-electrical quilting things. And when the power came back on, all the little machines in our house started beeping and whirring and clicking, like they were all talking to each other.

And because this heat wave has broken records, we are glad that they carry my father’s favorite gelato in our local grocery store. I can vouch for the deliciousness of Tahitian Vanilla Bean, and the jars are very cool for storing stuff once they are emptied.

Then I tried out the pattern for Circles Block #5. Fail. Total fail. Not the pattern, just what I had chosen. Back to the cutting table.

And then some of my favorite books arrived: the BLOCK magazine from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. Simple and easy and not complicated reading.

Almost finished with this post of trivia, hang in there with me. I chose a few colors to go with my incoming stack of Couture Cottons, which is part of a QuiltCon challenge. I hope this heat wave lifts soon, as it’s killing my productivity.

But Lisa has been productive, finishing up her French fabrics quilt for her daughter who has been on a church mission for 18 months and comes home in November. Lisa will tell you this with a giant smile on her face. Here the quilt is being shown at the Raincross Quilt Guild last night–a great event. We both had fun!