Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Avant Garden On the Go Bag

At this summer's Quilt Knit Stitch show, I was introduced to Patterns by Annie, a very cool pattern company and the makers of Soft and Stable, which is a kind of foam/batting hybrid to give structure to bags. I ended up buying the Patterns, Soft and Stable, and Hardware for two different patterns. This is the smaller of the two I bought patterns for, the On the Go bag.

I love having a smaller purse when I travel (my everyday purse is huge) so my goal was to finish this before I went on vacation. Mission accomplished! I hadn't done much purse sewing in a while, but my good friend Kim is an amazing bag maker and teacher and she said she'd help, so I figured I could figure it out with her help!





I used some of my birthday fabric from one of my favorite designers--Avant Garden by Momo and the purple linen Mochi dot binding is also by Momo. After cutting out the main pieces of the bag, you sandwich the Soft and Stable between the front fabric and the back fabric and then quilt that, then you cut more pieces from that. Very cool way to get your quilted fabric in!

The front flap has a zippered pocket with slots inside, as well as a vinyl pocket.




Slots inside the front flap zipper




A slip pocket on the back




Another vinyl pocket when you lift the flap up




Inside of flap




Credit card slots inside main body of bag (inside zipper)



Overall this pattern was really well written and although some of the pieces were difficult to bind because of going through so many thicknesses of Soft and Stable + fabric, I am pretty pleased with my results!

I'm excited to work on the next pattern and kit I have from Patterns by Annie--Mini Organizer. I'm going to try to adjust it to add an additional zipper across the top of the bag, I like my bags securely closed!