A surprise quilting project (Quilt studio diary)

Since I was in my teens, I’ve been careful to stop every envious thought that enters my mind before they take up residence. Over the years, this has become an automatic reaction, with one exception.

The one exception is my former quilting self.

It is surprising how often I look at a pleasing item that I have made and secretly wish I could make something like that.

Maybe confessing to this makes me seem deranged, but that is how my thoughts work sometimes. Sorry!

This week’s surprise project started like that because I’ve been envying the Sliver/Lastu zipper bag lately.

Long-time readers may remember seeing my original Sliver/Lastu zipper bag from year 2020. Some weeks ago, I came across it and set it to hang on a doorknob while I figured out what to do about the bag (to keep or gift or try to sell). I’ve been seeing the bag several times every day since then because that door is across the upstairs landing.

And I’ve been so envious of my previous success! See if you agree with me that this bag is very pleasing to the eye:

Why I like the original Sliver bag

There are three good reasons why I like the bag so much:

1. The bag has a nice shape. It isn’t as deep as my larger bags, but roomy enough. The proportions please my eye.

2. I love the bright colours in the scraps that I used. I wonder what I’d been working on to end up with such lovely leftovers! This year’s scraps aren’t quite as happy-looking.

I think part of the charm comes from the many lighter-value fabrics between the brights.

3. I really like the combination of scrappy and orderly. On the primary side of the bag, the strips are slightly triangular, and the seams do not run horizontally. I love that effect.

The slightly triangular shape of the scrappy strips was born out of necessity. I had sewn strips, and they were wider at one end. Being thrifty, I paired them and trimmed a minimum from the edges. The result was more or less of a rectangle, with an angled seam at the center.

The colour lesson that I learned from looking at the Sliver bag

One learning that I took from making my original Sliver bag was that a multicoloured surface will not look chaotic but intentional instead when the scraps are organised into pools or areas of colour.

Note the blue, red, and green strips, for example.

The surprise project begins

The thought of making another version of the bag just would not leave me alone, and I decided to see if I could make one as nice as Sliver again. Or if not quite as nice, then a nice enough one! But first, I had to clear the 9-patch project off the design floor – which I had to do on Monday anyway because that is our vacuuming day.

My design floor thus went from this:

...to hosting the first scrappy strips that I made:

I wanted to keep the scraps straight and make sure that none of them would be too short, so I sewed them on a paper backing. For paper, I used the longest shop receipts that I could find from my stash. Receipts are thin enough to easily sew through and rip out when the strip is done.

After measuring my ideal – the original Sliver bag – I had to add a few scraps to the ends of the strips, and then it was time to trim them and sew them together. Here, I’ve sewn the lowermost three already:

Note that I trimmed them to be narrower at one end, because that looks so nice on the original Sliver bag.

Sewing the strips together was quicker than I would have thought, and in just a few days, both bag surfaces were almost ready: they just needed a little more height.

I was going to sew two more scrappy strips, and when looking for another scrap container, I came across one whose contents I’d forgotten. When I opened it, I saw test and orphan blocks and in-progress surfaces. And ah-ha, I found some batik squares left over from making the Healthy/Terveellistä quilt!

Ready for quilting!

The leftover squares included three mostly dark purple ones which I promptly sewed together, pressed, cut in half and added to the bottom of the scrappy surfaces. Hey presto: bag surfaces were done!

I only need to find the thicker, iron-on batting/foam that I use for bags, press the pieces on, and quilt the pieces. Then my new version of the original Sliver bag will be ready for assembly.

Will this bag turn out as nice as Sliver/Lastu? I don’t know for certain, but I think it might be close to as nice. And like the quilting guru Angela Walters has said, “close enough is good enough”!

Who knows, maybe a few years from now, my future me will be just as envious of this bag as I've now been of the original!

I'll share the finished bag in a future studio diary post. If you want to make sure that you will see how it turns out, you're welcome to subscribe to my biweekly newsletter here: https://tilkunviilaaja.blogspot.com/p/subscribe-today.html