A new finish: the Legato quilted zipper bag

Hello hello! Welcome to have a peek in my sewing studio! Lately, I’ve been busy sewing patchwork surfaces into quilted zipper bags, and this post introduces the first of those finishes.

I’ve called it Legato, which is a music term meaning “tied together” – that the notes are to be played or sung smoothly without a silence between one note and another.

I used to play the piano in my childhood and youth, so the notation and the term became familiar to me. Legato felt like the right name choice because of the way the petals of the coneflower blend into the neighbouring reds in this surface.

The other side of the Legato quilted zipper bag is constructed in a similar way – around a focal fabric piece – but the orientation is horizontal:

Both surfaces are a rarity for me because I built them using the quilt-as-you-go method. The surface ends up looking as if it has not been quilted though it has, and I’m not sure how I feel about the look. In some earlier projects, I have added quilting on top of similarly constructed surfaces, to make them more pleasing to my own eyes.

On the other hand, the quilt-as-you-go method is inspiring because it starts with a single scrap piece, and you can improvise the surface around it one scrap at a time.

Here is a picture from the zipper bag construction phase:

If there is enough daylight, I like to take a picture of my quilted surfaces after I’ve trimmed them to shape. The transformation from an uneven piece into a purposeful one is so striking.

When constructing the diagonally-oriented side of the Legato quilted zipper bag, I did not overthink the colours. Instead, I worked according to scrap sizes. I quickly auditioned the next suitable-sized scrap and if it looked okay, I sewed it in.

Because I really liked the modern look of this side of the Legato zipper bag, I took a picture of it as soon as the surfaces were in the shape of a zipper bag:

In the photo, the zipper is still missing its tab at the end, but here you can see it in the finished Legato zipper bag:

Sewing the surfaces using the quilt-as-you-go method was an uncommon choice for me, and there is another uncommon thing in Legato: it has an inside pocket. Most often, I don’t add a pocket because a plain lining is simpler to make, but Legato seemed to need one.

Here’s the flip side of the Legato zipper bag again:

Legato belongs to the Open/Avoin series of zipper bags and its strategic measurements are as follows:

• Width at the top: 25 cm (around 10”)
• Height: 19 cm (7,5”)
• Width at the bottom: 8 cm (around 3”)

Wondering about the Open/Avoin series? Tilkunviilaaja’s Open/Avoin series zipper bags have this thing in common; I’ve sewn them using the excellent tutorial by Noodlehead: Open wide zippered bag. Like the name suggests, they all open generously and are thus very practical in use.

I follow the tutorial making this exception: I first construct the bag pieces, then find a suitable zipper from my stash. This is because I usually don’t make my quilt creations to match a pre-set size. They become the size they want to become!

Legato is the third zipper bag finish in 2026, and the 361st since I started recording my finishes in 2009. It felt like a small experiment because I’m not entirely convinced by the resulting look of the quilt-as-you-go method. The diagonal orientation, on the other hand: wait and see!


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