Modern Japanese Rice Pouch

This month has flown past and suddenly it is Christmas Eve! Since all my shopping and wrapping is done, I thought I’d sit down and share one of my last finishes for 2022 — a cute quilted pouch made for my friend Marisa for the Houston MQG Holiday Swap.

I used the Modern Japanese Rice Bag pattern by Karen Stevens to make this bag. I’ve used this pattern once before and enjoyed the result. I made one modification this time — instead of using lightweight interfacing, I quilted both the interior and exterior pieces to a thin piece of silk batting. This gave me the quilted look I wanted, and also gave the bag plenty of structure without any need for interfacing.

For the quilting, I used Aurifil 50 wt thread in #2975 or Brass. This is one of my favorite shades and it truly works with just about anything! As you can see, it looked great with the pinks, purples, and golds that I chose based on Marisa’s preferences. The quilting motif is the 6-set grid from Jacquie Gehring’s Walk 2.0 book. It’s a fairly time-consuming but stunning motif to sew, and I knew the result would be worth it!

For the drawstrings, I ordered fun Tula Pink ruler ribbon from Renaissance Ribbons. Another fun feature of this bag is that it is totally reversible, so Marisa can use whichever side she happens to like.

I haven’t done much sewing in the last several weeks, and making this bag for Marisa was a really enjoyable way to wrap up the year!