Finished: the quilted Rumba shoulder bag (Quilt studio diary)
In my previous post less than a week ago, I introduced a surprise project – and now the project is finished! I wanted to see if I could create as nice a zippered bag as I’d done a few years ago.
Here are the two bags side by side: Sliver/Lastu on the left and the new Rumba shoulder bag on the right – you decide how they compare. For me, they look surprisingly similar on these sides, and are equal in charm.
Before I share more photos of the finished Rumba bag, here are a few in-progress shots. First, one surface piece when quilted:
And the other piece after quilting:
Although I have many other go-to quilting patterns, easy enough to do and suitable for smaller surfaces that I quilt on my domestic sewing machine, I decided to use the same pattern that I used on the Sliver bag.
I got the idea for this quilting pattern of intersecting arcs from my long-time IG friend Alfhild @alborve and it has become my favourite. Where the two arcs intersect, a crosshatch pattern emerges, and it makes the surface so much more interesting.
Instead of using bamboo batting left over from quilt projects like I do for small zipper pouches, I ironed on a thicker batting. It is sturdy enough to give a nice shape for a bag, but supple enough so that I can assemble the bag without cutting off the batting from under the seam allowances.
After the assembly of the bag part and the lining, there are always a few steps to take, but I forgot to take a photo of any of those steps. Apologies! But I did take a few pictures of the nearly finished bag. First, a picture where you can see that I haven’t quite sewn in the final top binding:
And then, a picture that shows the cute Tula Pink fabric in the zipper panel:
After I’d hand-sewn in the folded edge of the binding, I ran two lines of machine stitching around it, catching the handles into their correct position. I made a hexagon tab to finish the zipper end neatly, and added a narrow bias strip to the zipper pull.
Speaking of the tab for the zipper end, the original Lastu bag had to wait for that for a year and seven months!!! I’d made the bag and even shot pictures (because I was thrilled by how it looked) before I had added the tab. And partly because I hadn’t discovered the joy of hexagon tabs yet, I put the unpleasant (though small) task aside for an embarrassingly long time.
Not this time! Here is proof: a neat hexie tab sewn of carefully curated fabrics to match the bag.
Ta-dah! This is how the quilted Rumba shoulder bag looks now that it’s finished:
This is the side with the fabric scrap that gave inspiration for the name, Rumba. There is a scrap that shows strawberries, and one strawberry variety is called Rumba.
The other side of this bag looks like this:
I used some of the cutoffs from my most recent X block quilt surface as part of the lining and the inside pocket. On hindsight, fewer seams would ensure a smoother lining.
The kitten-patterned zipper panel is the cutest feature of the quilted Rumba shoulder bag:
Though the quilting pattern on the bottom part of the bag is cute too, don’t you think?
The strategic measurements of the quilted Rumba shoulder bag are as follows:
When sewing the scrappy bag surfaces, I was aiming for a finished bag size that would accommodate a laptop, but that didn’t happen. No surprise there: I’m notoriously bad at creating quilted items to match a certain size.
Here are the three reasons why I like the new Rumba bag:
1. The Rumba bag has a nice shape (like the original Sliver bag does). The proportions are practical and good.
2. I like the bright colours of the scraps near the top, and I’m glad that the bottom of the bag features darker scraps because it is practical.
3. Again, the scrappy strips are slightly triangular or wedge-shaped, and unlike on Sliver, both sides of the bag have been constructed in the same way. (There were more free-form scrappiness on the other side of the Sliver bag.)
The above reasons are similar to the ones I listed for liking the original Sliver bag, but there are two differences. I made the scrappy pieces with even more intention, and included darker, identical strips on the bottom.
Here’s a final face-on shot of the quilted Rumba shoulder bag:
Rumba is my first bag finish in 2026. The statistics show that since November 2009, I have made an average of 4,2 bags per year. Do you think I’ll be finishing 3,2 more bags this year? (I will be very surprised myself if that happens.)
If you want to follow my quilty endeavours and get some quilting tips too, you can subscribe to my biweekly email newsletter here: https://tilkunviilaaja.blogspot.com/p/subscribe-today.html
(Remember to take the second step when subscribing: you will get an email asking you to confirm. My emailing system can only send you the newsletters if you have clicked on the button in that email.)
Here are the two bags side by side: Sliver/Lastu on the left and the new Rumba shoulder bag on the right – you decide how they compare. For me, they look surprisingly similar on these sides, and are equal in charm.
I got the idea for this quilting pattern of intersecting arcs from my long-time IG friend Alfhild @alborve and it has become my favourite. Where the two arcs intersect, a crosshatch pattern emerges, and it makes the surface so much more interesting.
Instead of using bamboo batting left over from quilt projects like I do for small zipper pouches, I ironed on a thicker batting. It is sturdy enough to give a nice shape for a bag, but supple enough so that I can assemble the bag without cutting off the batting from under the seam allowances.
After the assembly of the bag part and the lining, there are always a few steps to take, but I forgot to take a photo of any of those steps. Apologies! But I did take a few pictures of the nearly finished bag. First, a picture where you can see that I haven’t quite sewn in the final top binding:
Speaking of the tab for the zipper end, the original Lastu bag had to wait for that for a year and seven months!!! I’d made the bag and even shot pictures (because I was thrilled by how it looked) before I had added the tab. And partly because I hadn’t discovered the joy of hexagon tabs yet, I put the unpleasant (though small) task aside for an embarrassingly long time.
Not this time! Here is proof: a neat hexie tab sewn of carefully curated fabrics to match the bag.
The other side of this bag looks like this:
- Width on top: around 37,5 cm (14,5")
- Height: around 28,5 cm (11)
- Depth: 10 cm (4")
Here are the three reasons why I like the new Rumba bag:
1. The Rumba bag has a nice shape (like the original Sliver bag does). The proportions are practical and good.
2. I like the bright colours of the scraps near the top, and I’m glad that the bottom of the bag features darker scraps because it is practical.
3. Again, the scrappy strips are slightly triangular or wedge-shaped, and unlike on Sliver, both sides of the bag have been constructed in the same way. (There were more free-form scrappiness on the other side of the Sliver bag.)
The above reasons are similar to the ones I listed for liking the original Sliver bag, but there are two differences. I made the scrappy pieces with even more intention, and included darker, identical strips on the bottom.
Here’s a final face-on shot of the quilted Rumba shoulder bag:
If you want to follow my quilty endeavours and get some quilting tips too, you can subscribe to my biweekly email newsletter here: https://tilkunviilaaja.blogspot.com/p/subscribe-today.html
(Remember to take the second step when subscribing: you will get an email asking you to confirm. My emailing system can only send you the newsletters if you have clicked on the button in that email.)
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