Finished: Little Black quilted zipper bag

Today, my quilt studio diary entry concentrates on a recent zipper bag finish. I gave it a Finnish name first, “Pikkumusta,” which translates directly into “Little Black”. But you may not know that the Finnish word means a little black dress, not anything else that might be black – we just save one word.

So, here’s the Little Black quilted zipper bag, basking in the sun. Do you think that cat near the lower edge has closed her eyes because of the sunshine?

One in-progress photo first. I took a picture of the zipper bag panels after I’d quilted but not yet trimmed them. And you know what: I didn’t remember to photograph the trimmed pieces!

Both panels conveniently featured a scrap showing a round shape (they are really Christmas tree baubles), which inspired me to run a spiral of stitches on the surfaces. It is my second favourite way to quilt zipper bags.

By the way, I’ve shared my 21 easy quilting patterns that I choose from when quilting small patchwork surfaces such as zipper bag panels.

I may have mentioned this before, but I’ll say it anyway. This is the one moment in the zipper bag making process that always amuses me. When I’m turning the bag right side out, at one point, it will inevitably look like it’s never going to become anything:

And yet, the bag will eventually be smooth and neat, and that's how Little Black is too. Here you can see how smooth and neat – and also what its other side looks like:

When we moved into our home nearly 25 years ago, we found the bench you see in the above photo in the garden. Already then, it looked like it would not last long, but it has surprised us many times over. It serves as a picturesque background when I’m taking photos of smaller quilted items, and it is still ok for us to sit on too.

Here’s another, very sunny photo of the Little Black quilted zipper bag:

Though I don’t miss the previous, dilapidated concrete steps that we had, they did look more interesting somehow in my quilt photos. These new steps have a bit of patina but (luckily for us who use them) they don’t have the same look of ”romantic ruin” that the old ones had.

The other side of the Little Black zipper bag also got to pose lying down in the sun:

This photo shows the zipper pouch from above and you can also see the hexagon piece that I used to finish the end of the zipper:

How lucky was I to find a nearly perfect match, with black and white and just a bit of red visible – just like on the bag panels.

Little Black is again of the Open series, and its strategic measurements are as follows:

• Width at the top: 19 cm (around 7-1/2")
• Height: 12,5 cm (around 5")
• Depth on the bottom: 5 cm (around 2")

I took the previous photos in our yard and it would have been enough for this post of course. However, two days later the weather was gorgeously sunny and warm and I decided to go for a short walk, taking the new zipper bags with me.

I found a few spots that were quite different from anything available in our garden. This one, for example:

I have one more zipper bag to introduce to you and then I’ll share the group photos that I took during my short walk. If you don’t want to miss those group photos, subscribe to my biweekly email newsletter. In the newsletters, I share links to my latest blog posts. Subscribe to my biweekly newsletter.

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