Every year my extended family (siblings, nieces, and nephews) draws names for Christmas, so instead of giving presents to everyone, we each give a present to one other person. This year I got my 7-year-old niece Avery’s name, and she she loves “cute things” I decided to make her a bag!
This was a somewhat spontaneous idea after seeing my friend Megan Collins make a bag for her daughter. I followed the rabbit trail from Megan’s post to Rosie Taylor Crafts, who has a bunch of really cute patterns. I decided to go with the Little Busy Bag — it seemed like a nice size, and I liked that it had a pocket on the outside in addition to the space inside the bag.
Avery told my sister that her favorite color is “galaxy” which was explained as a mixture of dark purple and blue. With that as my starting point, I pulled fabrics from my stash. The bunnies and moons are from an old collection by Felice Regina for Windham, the ice dyed purple is from my friend Audrey Esarey, and the purple print binding (on the inside) is by Stephanie Organes for Andover.
The pattern was well written and easy to follow, with plenty of helpful pictures. I’ve made enough bags at this point in my sewing journey that I have a good general understanding of how they go together, but I still need solid instructions to make things go more smoothly!
Since all of the bag panels are quilted, the bag has really nice structure, but that also meant there were a few very thick seams! That was probably the most challenging part of the construction, but thankfully my semi-industrial Juki machine can handle it.
I picked up some hardware and webbing and zippers from my local Joann’s. (Side note — I saw the news this week that Joann’s has filed for bankruptcy again. Such a bummer. I shopped there on a near-weekly basis when I first started sewing, and still popped in occasionally for stuff like this.)
I made a slight modification to the strap to make it removable with lobster claw claps. Since Avery was visiting us after Christmas, I also let her pick out a zipper pull from my small stash of them. She chose this Ruby Star rainbow — so cute!
The inside seams are finished with bias binding, which adds another fun detail and makes for a really clean finish. I filled the bag with a few other trinkets — a notebook, markers, sticky notes, and some kind of fancy hand sanitizer that my kids are currently obsessed with. (Ha.)
Avery used this bag every day while they were in Houston, so I think she liked it! Hooray!
#saroy1sec #1secondev
Galaxy – what a great description for a favorite color. This is beautiful and I hope she continues to enjoy using it!