Drawstring Backpack Tutorial

Warning, super super picture heavy post!! I have step by step (by step!) pictures for making this awesome easy(ish) drawstring backpack! And may I say, wow blogger took FOREVER...

Alright, most of the directions are on the pictures, and each picture is numbered. I refer to picture numbers in a couple steps :) 

Materials:

Yardage requirements for 1 fabric bag(straps/casing/body all one fabric): 3/4 yard

Yardage requirements for 2 fabric bag(pictured): 1/2 yard for body, and 1/2 yard for straps and casing

Matching thread

Important!!! IRON YOUR FABRIC before you cut it out. It will make your life soooo much easier.

Cut sizes:

Bag body 14" x 30"

casing 4" x 14" (cut TWO)

straps 4" x 34" (cut TWO) 

I use something called french seams on the body of this bag (pictures 2 and 3). You can just serge it if you want, but I like the finish of french seams for the inside of the bag.  

Now time to prep the top casing:

And now the straps:

Ok, back to the casing. 

Alright, now to attach straps to bag body. I apologize for the somewhat crappy pictures and instructions for the straps. I realized midway that I should have had the bag turned how it is in pic 18 so it would make more sense...

Time for the casing!

As always, if you have any questions or need clarification or whatever, leave me a comment or shoot me an email! I'm finishing this late at night, and it makes sense to me now...I will definitely need to proof it again in the morning! :)

Twinkly Stars Quilt Finish!

It is finished! I finished up the binding on this cute thing on Sunday night, and now I want all my quilts to be this small, because it seemed like the binding took no time at all!

So, all the star fabrics are SCRAPS, how cool is that? I feel so accomplished, I busted some scraps! Though, like I said in this post, I got bored of making stars after making these 9, so I decided that a small quilt was in order!

I used this awesome Jennifer Pagenelli stripe I had sitting in my stash begging to be used. It frames all that white on the front great!

When I asked my quilting consultant (aka the hubs!) what I should use for the back, he said it needed some BAM! Off to the stash I went again, and I found this print that was also begging to be used! I bought it thinking I would use it in Zoey's string quilt, but decided it would look better in something with bigger pieces. Well, BAM! It works perfectly as backing; then you do't lose the awesome print!

This is my favorite star. The center block on it is only 1 1/2". It's so tiny!

I quilted with an all over loopy (still one of my favorites!), but I made smaller loops than I usually do, since this quilt is so tiny.

Oh and I tell ya, when you start quilting something, check the back for tension problems RIGHT AWAY! I got almost 1/4 of the way done with this one and THEN remembered to look...Yeah, the seam ripper and I spent some quality time together...But now it looks fabulous, so that seam ripping was worth it :)



I have listed this pretty little quilt in the shop, so it can find someone to love it as much as I do!

A Sneak Peek

Just so you know I haven't been slacking (except in the blogging department!) here's a little peek at what I have been working on.  Got it basted last night (SO not my favorite part of quilt making!!!) but my machine has been a bit under the weather, so I'm taking her in today for a little check up and adjusting.  Hopefully I will be quilting on this one soon!

Like I need something else...

Why do new ideas pop into my head when I have ten gazillion things to do?

This stuff doesn't happen in Arizona!!!

So, we had a crazy bad storm yesterday. It was naptime, so I was in sewing and listening to an audiobook. It had been thundering for a while, but then the lights started flickering and I could hear wind and loud rain. So, I went out to look out our balcony. All I could see was the tree right next to our balcony practically bent over, and WHITE. I couldn't see the parking lot(usually VERY visible), I couldn't see ANYTHING but blowing rain and hail!

And then my entire apartment SHOOK.

I'll admit, I kinda freaked out. I like Arizona because I don't have to worry about things like hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes. And I felt like I was in the middle of it all!

Anyways, the craziness lasted another 10 or so minutes, and abruptly cleared. From my balcony I could see 3 fallen trees and lots of branches, so that didn't bode very well. And my street looked and sounded like a rushing river. Cars driving by had water up to the car body. It was insane.

And my little spot wasn't so bad! Zoey and I took a walk this morning to snap pictures of some of the damage around us.

Luckily this tree just decided to rest on the covered parking, and there wasn't a car underneath!

Another uprooted tree. It's leaning on the fence...

This is what our walk was really for. This billboard is about 1/4 mile away from our apartment on the main road. It was straight up and down yesterday morning.

Seriously crazy. That huge piece of metal is TWISTED.

When I drove by this yesterday afternoon on the way to work, the huge tree that caused all of this damage was still on top of those poor cars. The wood chipper was at work this morning!

I feel really bad for our maintenance guys right now...They have so much work ahead of them!

Here's the trunk. It took that whole chunk of ground out with it! (It was a ginormous pine tree)

Walking back, we found another building that met a tree.

And then I rounded the corner to go get our mail, and found ANOTHER huge tree uprooted!

Aaaaand another one!

I could hear the wood chipper working in the back of the complex where we didn't venture, too, so I imagine there was a lot more going on than I saw on my little walk. There are branches littering the ground everywhere. And guess what? It's getting gray outside again. Hope it isn't as bad as yesterday!!

Hopefully I will have sewing related stuff to post soon instead of destruction!