The latest finish: May Day quilted zipper bag

Happy Thursday, and it’s time to have a look at my sewing studio!

This is a modern quilting blog focused on patchwork, scrappy quilts, zipper pouches, quilted bags, colour theory, and practical quilting tutorials. Today, I’ll share a recently finished project: a quilted zipper bag called May Day. This zipper bag got that name because I finished it in time to enjoy the May Day celebrations which are a big thing in Finland.

I love the spring! Since I started blogging, I’ve grown to love the months that offer a lot of daylight even more than I used to because my makes look so much nicer in well-lit photos.

Before looking at the other side of the May Day zipper bag, let’s go back in time to the moment when I’d built a small, rectangular surface and realised that I could make it more interesting. I found a large half-square triangle, sewn goodness knows when, and cut it mercilessly in half. The pieces looked good for making new corners for my original surface:

In the photo, you may notice a pin. I’ve marked the piece and the side that I wanted to make bigger. I’ve also pinned and flipped the other triangle. At this point, I noticed that the small deer would be upside down in the finished bag if these would be the bottom corners.

In the next photo, you can see that I chose the opposite corners to be at the bottom, that I did enlarge the other piece – and that the tiny deer is no longer upside down:

I like to place darker scraps on the side that I envision as the bottom of the zipper bag because then, the bottom won’t show the possible dirt as well as light-coloured fabrics might.

And now it’s time to show you the flip size of the finished May Day quilted zipper bag:

Don’t you think that the striped side tabs look nice?! (I think so.) I also found a suitable zipper in orange colour and chose a lining that matches it:

I like to add a neat tab to the free end of the zipper, and the hexagon shape has proven to be the easiest to topstitch neatly. It takes a few moments longer to sew the tab, especially if I have to first cut and sew the hexagons, but it is worth the effort.

The May Day zipper bag has the following strategic measurements:

• Width at the top: 24 cm (around 9,5”)
• Height: 20 cm (almost 8”)
• Width of the bottom: 8 cm (around 3”)

May Day belongs to the Open/Avoin series of zipper bags, which I sew following Noodlehead’s Open Wide Zippered Pouch tutorial. In my photos, you may have noticed the tag with the text Tilkunviilaaja on it:

I used to add a watermark to my photos, to make them more difficult to use without permission. Then, my husband gave me this tag as a present. I’m not sure if he planned a particular use for it, but I knew right away that I would be using it in my photos. And I’ve done so ever since.

That small tag has saved me time because it is part of the image, so a watermark isn't needed.

One more photo of the May Day quilted zipper bag:

The surface looks festive and colourful, just right for May Day (Vappu in Finnish)! I also like the diagonal orientation of the scraps. Putting together such a surface takes a little more organising and thinking, but the results make it worth the effort.


If you want to follow what I’m working on and what I’ve finished (and get some quilting tips, too), you can subscribe to my biweekly newsletter here: https://tilkunviilaaja.blogspot.com/p/subscribe-today.html