First finish out of 11: the Early Days quilted zipper bag

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Yay, it is still possible for me to reach the goal of sewing at least the average number of zipper bags this year! This recent finish, Early Days / Alkutaival is a step towards that goal:
This was my starting point, more or less:
The panels look underwhelming, don’t they? I found the upper piece amongst my resources (my scrap stash) and for some reason, it has only been partly quilted. I don’t remember why I made it in the first place – though I have a vague recollection that I put the piece together very quickly. But why would I start quilting it and not finish? No idea.

Even though I had started the quilting with quite nice-looking stippling, I didn't want to return to my discomfort zone of free-motion quilting. That is why the rest of the quilting on that panel are straight-stitched curves.
The other zipper bag panel got one of my favourite designs, intersecting arcs, though the placement of the arcs is different from my usual choice.

If you want to know more about the intersecting arcs, you can explore the pattern and 20 more of my go-to quilting patterns for small surfaces in this blog post.

In real life, it takes me surprisingly long to finish a zipper bag. I’m a slow stitcher and use practically no shortcuts. But here in my blog, it takes no time to jump from the quilted panel to the finished Early Days quilted zipper bag:
Though I didn’t really like the weird, forgotten panel, the finished quilting and the three-dimensional shape of the bag make it look much better. See how nicely the sun makes the quilting patterns stand out!

This is the more presentable side of the Early Days zipper bag:
I cannot help it that I always prefer one side over the other. This time, the choice was easy.

The Early Days quilted zipper bag is of the Open series and pretty small. Its strategic measurements are as follows:
  • Width at the top: 16 cm (around 6-1/4")
  • Height: 11 cm (around 4-1/4")
  • Depth on the bottom: 4 cm (around 1-1/2")
For the lining, I found a cute piece of fabric – the correct, fresh look to complement the outside of this quilted zipper pouch:
This zipper pouch got its name Early Days because it is early days yet to say if I will be able to produce 10 more bags by the end of the year – to reach my average number of pouch finishes per year. However, I do have another bag done; I just haven’t been able to take any good photos of it because the weather has been so bleak. I feel hopeful, both about my goal and the weather.

We’ll see!

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