A simple bag, enlarged

Last week I made a tote bag from a pattern in Yoko Saito's book, and blogged about it , here

 I liked the shape of it, but wanted to make it larger, so I sized it up a bit,

 

 This shows both bags,

This  time I used an orphan quilt block appliqued on the front panel.  It is an antique block that I bought in a whole stack of blocks a couple of years ago.  

I like the bag, but I might make one even a bit larger.  This one used the full 42" width of the fabric for the black patterned piece in the picture above, so I guess I'll need to piece it for a bigger one. 

cutter quilt project, placemats

A couple of years ago we used 1930s reproduction fabrics as one of the colorways for our Saturday surprise sampler blocks.  At that time i sewed some pieced blocks from my scraps thinking I would make a baby quilt.  

When I sewed the units together it didn't really excite me. So, I just folded it 

up and put it away. I think that I would have liked it more if there had been more white in it.

A few days ago I pulled it out and looked at it again, wondering what else I could use it for,

One possibility was to turn it into a cushion cover, just by folding it in half horizontally to make a large cushion.   It measures about 30" x 35"

I decided to quilt it while I was still thinking about possibilities. I just sewed a series of vertical lines over the top.

I folded it around a pillow to get an idea of what it would look like as a cushion, but I decided against that.

In the end I cut it into four main pieces, with a little bit left over down the center, in order to make placemats.  Of course I still had lots of scraps so I used them for binding.

Here are the two that I have finished selwing the binding around.

Of course I still have that little leftover strip,  Who knows what I could use it for in the future

Perfect Pears and a Punchneedle

Today the sun is streaming through the dining room window, and I had to record the pears that R brought home. They are tiny but perfect. the color on them is amazing.



(I took my new little punchneedle mat there to photograph, and got side-tracked by the pears.)

Re. the punchneedle; it is about 5" x 9". I did the punched thread part a year or two ago and it has been lying in a basket of unfinished things. It seems that January is a time when I go through these baskets and finish some of the projects. Sometimes I do something different than what I had initially intended with the project.
That's what happened with this punch-needle mat. I had intended to frame it, but lately I have so many things that are for the wall that another just isn't needed around here. Instead, I decided to make it into a little mat. So, all I did was trim the extra fabric to about 3/8" from the edge of the punched part and turned it to the back, using stitches to tack it in place. Then I basted it to some felted wool and stitched it down and removed the basting. I used my little ripple blade on the rotary cutter to trim the edge of the wool to about 1/4" from the punched part. And voila!
So, having finished a project, it seemed only logical to start another. Right?
I had a stack of reproduction fabrics, 1930's -1950's, that is in all sorts of candy colors. I was debating whether to use them for another log cabin or maybe even start a double wedding ring quilt.... then, it occurred to me that I had always wanted to do a postage stamp trip around the world. That was it. I enthusiastically pulled out the fabrics and started cutting strips. After sewing for a while I have realized that I have about 60 or 70 strips too many.

Hmmm. I suppose it is an opportunity to use the extra ones to do something to add to the American Jane panel that I've been saving. But!, I didn't really intend to end up with two more projects today.
And this is one of the roses on the dining room table, which is very beautiful.