Mom's new purse

For Mom's trip and Mother's Day, she requested a purse to match her new dress and shoes for the wedding they are going to. She had shortened her green dress and gave me those left overs and then found various peach fabrics for the rest of the purse. I think making this purse with lots of different fabrics would also be fun.

I needed to add a little quilting to the sides of the purse but didn't want anything extensive so that the bag would stay supple. I choose a variegated neutral thread so as not to distract from the roses on the fabric. I found a neat corner FMQ pattern in one of my quilting books and enlarged it 25%. I knew there was no way I would be able to do this free hand so I tried a couple of ideas but finally resorted to using my 505 spray basting stuff to attach the paper to the purse side. Genius, even if I say so myself.

Before actually quilting the purse parts, I traced the pattern with my finger several times to get my brain in the groove. The red ring is my Halo - a heavy rubberized iron ring - which is the only way to FMQ as far as I am concerned. The rubber grabs the fabric and the ring keeps the workspace in the center flat. It also provides something to grip while moving the quilt sandwhich.

The photo above shows the quilting a little better - you can see I was not overly concerned about staying on the lines. I was looking more for the gist of the pattern with my own twist.

Then I needed to pull off the paper with the help of these great sideways tweezers that I bought when I was doing more paper piecing. The only downfall to sewing over the paper was that the stitching was a little looser than I liked but I spritzed it with water and some steam and the stitches tightened nicely.

The handles can be pulled thru the grommets evenly to carry the purse by hand ...

or pulled thru the grommets for a shoulder strap.

That completes my deadline items for this month...Now I'm back to hexies :)

WootWoot!!