Opera zipper bag - from start to finish
Greetings from my quilt studio (also called "the sewing table")! This is an unusually detailed description of how one of my zipper bags - the one called Opera / Ooppera came to life.
A couple of weeks ago, I was going out to an evening do and noticed – again – that neither of my two trusted small purses went well with what I was wearing. I picked up one of my zipper bags, which was an ok choice. However, I felt that I should have a more unicoloured one.
Already on the next day, I went through my smaller scraps and from one container, picked up the smallest ones. I made two stacks, one for deeper, another for lighter shades of red/pink.
Then I cut a few shop receipts narrower and used them as guides to sew long-ish, scrappy rectangular pieces.
My original idea was to build a bag with one darker side and one lighter side.
Because I found two precious, long-saved pieces of Tula Pink fabrics, I ended up having a combination of darker and lighter pieces on both side pieces.
After the quilt surfaces were ready, I was in front of the usual challenge: how to quilt?
And as usual, I chose NOT to do free-motion, but chose to straight-stitch whatever came to mind. The obvious starting point was to stitch the missing owl pieces (I first used an erasable marked so I’d know where to stitch). The smaller turns are always a bit fiddly, but it helps a lot when one just sews very slowly.
After the owl shape was visible, I just echoed it. Much easier stitching!
Then the bird on the other side. I first stitched its outline, but the shape was much more complicated than the owl and felt awkward to echo as such. So I drew a curve below the bird, stitched along it and continued to echo.
When the curve and its echoes was clearly visible, I realised that I could apply one of my favourite quilting designs – number 13 of the 21 quilting ideas that I listed in this blog post. So I drew another curve which crossed the others, then echoed that one.
Finally, I created a few stitched lines within the bird and around it, to achieve a more or less even quilting on the surface.
I found a zipper that was slightly too short for being practical for me to sew, but it echoed (again that word) the bright colour on the bird side of the zipper bag. The bird also features some lime-yellow-green specks of colour.
Despite the small challenges with the slightly-too-short a zipper, I was able to put the bag together. On a sunny February day, it gave me great pleasure to have a photo shoot of the Opera / Ooppera zipper bag.
The bird side of the Opera zipper bag looks fancy enough for a finer evening do such as going to the opera, but somehow, the owl side has a bit too much of the everyday vibe on it. It must be the relatively large area of dusty pinks that make it less festive.
We had quite a bit of snow that day, as you can see!
The Opera bag has a pale polka dot lining. I prefer to use light-coloured fabrics for purse/pouch/bag linings because it is easier then to locate and identify the items that are on the bottom of the purse/pouch/bag.
You can also imagine that I had very little room to manoeuver the end of the zipper!
My Opera bag is only the second zipper bag finish in 2026 but it’s the 360th in my recorded history of zipper bags. It is of the Street series because it has one long wrist strap.
The long wrist strap was so long as not to completely fit into the next image!
The strategic measurements of the Opera / Ooppera zipper bag are as follows:
If you want to keep up-to-date on what I’m working on – and also get all my quilting tips – here you can subscribe to my biweekly newsletter.
A couple of weeks ago, I was going out to an evening do and noticed – again – that neither of my two trusted small purses went well with what I was wearing. I picked up one of my zipper bags, which was an ok choice. However, I felt that I should have a more unicoloured one.
Already on the next day, I went through my smaller scraps and from one container, picked up the smallest ones. I made two stacks, one for deeper, another for lighter shades of red/pink.
Then I cut a few shop receipts narrower and used them as guides to sew long-ish, scrappy rectangular pieces.
After the quilt surfaces were ready, I was in front of the usual challenge: how to quilt?
And as usual, I chose NOT to do free-motion, but chose to straight-stitch whatever came to mind. The obvious starting point was to stitch the missing owl pieces (I first used an erasable marked so I’d know where to stitch). The smaller turns are always a bit fiddly, but it helps a lot when one just sews very slowly.
Finally, I created a few stitched lines within the bird and around it, to achieve a more or less even quilting on the surface.
I found a zipper that was slightly too short for being practical for me to sew, but it echoed (again that word) the bright colour on the bird side of the zipper bag. The bird also features some lime-yellow-green specks of colour.
The Opera bag has a pale polka dot lining. I prefer to use light-coloured fabrics for purse/pouch/bag linings because it is easier then to locate and identify the items that are on the bottom of the purse/pouch/bag.
You can also imagine that I had very little room to manoeuver the end of the zipper!
- Width at the top: around 18 cm (7")
- Height: around 13 cm (5")
- Depth at the bottom: 5,5 cm (2-1/4")
If you want to keep up-to-date on what I’m working on – and also get all my quilting tips – here you can subscribe to my biweekly newsletter.
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