I’m excited to be heading to Michigan for the first Glamp Stitchalot next month.  In exactly a month, holy cow!!  I signed up for the swap, my first ever, and I’m glad I did.  It’s for a project bag, and I tried a new pattern and I’m very happy with how it turned out!

It’s a blind swap so I don’t want to list the likes and dislikes of my partner because I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but here’s the outside of the bag and the handles…

And I managed to finish the bag tonight.  I didn’t plan on it, but I just started to work on it, and kept on going, and it really didn’t take very long (I had the outside of the bag completed previously, just had to make the handles and put the lining together, then sew it all up).

I used the Improv Tote Tutorial from Vanessa at The Crafty Gemini that she did with Jenny from Missouri Quilt Co.  It’s a two-part tutorial, and tutorial #1 has 240,000 views – I was probably 12+ of those views!  I think people gave up before getting to tutorial #2, it only has 150,000 views!

I don’t have a lot of experience making totes/bags, but this one wasn’t hard. Everything came together really well for me. The only problem I had was that the In R Form fusible foam stabilizer that I used really wasn’t fusible at all.  Despite many attempts, it just wasn’t fusing to my fabric.  Gretchen to the rescue – she reminded me of our long time friend, Elmer’s Glue.  Vanessa and Jenny were falling all over themselves about the In R Form, so I had high hopes.  I wonder if I just got a bad piece?  Anyway, I’ll give it another shot in the future.

After several weeks of absolutely NO Sewing, I managed to finish 3 quilts, and work my way through my WIP to finish it up.  Not a bad week!