While visiting my family members in Michigan I went to a quilt shop with my sister, the quilter. She took up quilting a number of years ago and the way I feel about knitting is the way she feels about quilting. And I really get it! She frequents a very special well-stocked shop called The Quilter's Garden in Fenton, Michigan. With so many samples laying around and hanging on the walls you can't help but want to make something. The owner, Carolyn, doesn't just have quilts in her shop. She has lots of smaller projects for those who are just starting out-- totes, purses, clothing, baby supplies, wall pieces, etc. Carolyn is well-known for her own designs and she has a gift for pulling fabrics in colors that make your finished project pop. My sister has this gift as well and over the years she has made many special quilts for all the young family members. Each of her 8 grandchildren have their first baby quilts that she made and one of her recently finished projects is two quilts made in the fabrics specially designed for the Boy Scouts. The two grandsons holding their quilts are well on their way to becoming Eagle Scouts and we are really proud of them.
Who would have thunk I would call something made up in Boy Scout fabric gorgeous? But when I saw the quilts it was a real Wow! The finished quilts are so beautiful and I think her two grandsons were really surprised and thrilled to receive them for their birthdays earlier this year. The fabrics are designed by Robert Kaufman and it makes me feel patriotic just looking at them.
Anyway it was a pleasure to visit Carol's lovely store and to appreciate her love of the craft of quilting in providing her customers with all the inspiration they could ever need as well as all the supplies to see the dream quilts in their minds come into tangible being to be touched, cherished and snuggled in.
I don't exactly need another project right now and I certainly don't need to take up another hobby since my fingers can't seem to keep up with all the knitting I would like to do, but how could I resist this fun "Bali Bag" tote designed by Two Aunties (see above picture). There was a sample already made up in the store and it's the perfect size for a knitting project bag or a beach tote or even an everyday purse and it's sturdy enough to load up with even heavy items such as water bottles and books.
I left with the jelly roll in the picture above. One jelly roll is just the right size for a medium-size tote.
The tote is made by wrapping 125 feet of cotton covered clothesline (My husband found it at WalMart, Mainstays, a brand recommmended on the internet) with 2 1/2" wide strips of fabric and sewing it down the middle. Once you have all the clothesline covered you begin sewing the clotheline together with a zig zag stitch going around and around and around and aroooound. This project eats thread! Each tote takes at least three large 250 meter spools of thread. I wound four bobbins for this tote before I started and used all of it. The pattern has very thorough instructions but I did find it helpful to watch some of the videos posted on Youtube before I started sewing. There are definitely some helpful tips.
One of the most challenging things is working with a 2 1/2" wide piece of fabric that is over 125 feet long and a clothesline that is just as long. I found it getting so twisted after a while that I was having to stop frequently to untwist. The method that I came up with that seems to work the best is to spread the clothesline and fabric out from my sewing machine at one end of the house letting it trail all the way down the hall and over our balcony hanging down in to the family room. This way it doesn't get all twisted and I don't have to stop every couple of feet or so and untwist.
The cats throughly enjoyed the fabric and clothesline running through the house and had lots of fun chasing the line as I pulled it along. I just let them have fun with it. I don't think they could hurt anything since everything gets so tightly sewn together in the end. Even if they did leave a few claw holes or bite marks they would all get covered up with the zig-zagging.
Here's the finished results of my first Bali Bag.
I ended up using the wrong sides of the buttons. They looked a little more irregular and hand-crafted on the other side, but I elected not to use the smaller abalone shell buttons that I tried out.
The tote was very thick and sturdy by the time it was all sewn up and I ended up having to use needle nose pliers to pull the threaded needle through as I sewed the bottons on to the tote. Takes some muscle this project!
The only kind of disappinting thing about my first Bali Bag is that some of my favorite colors in the jelly roll ended up on the bottom of the bag. For this project I sewed the strips together in the exact order that they came off the jelly roll. This made for very quick sewing. Next time I will think a little bit more about the way the colors will distribute as the bag comes together and take the time to rearrange the strips to my liking.
This week I bought some more batiks to make my own jelly rolls at the Savage Quilter in Oklahoma City. They have two aisles full of batiks that made it easy to pull and it's hard to go wrong with batiks. The colors are all so gorgeous and random and everything seems to work well together. I just tried to follow the rules my sister said to follow when picking out fabrics for quilts. Be sure to have a nice mixture of lights and darks for contrast and at least one or two interesting fabrics that really pop.
We'll see how this one turns out. I'll keep you posted.
I am still squeezing in some knitting in between my adventures with clothesline. I'll post more pics later.
Happy Knitting, Josey
Your bag is fabulous! I appreciate your helpful hints. Thanks for sharing!
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