Buttercup Bag

Wow, it's been a long, ling time since I've blogged!  Whoops, sorry about that.  :)  Things have been crazy busy for months, so I've found that blogging gets left behind.

Did you have a nice Mother's Day?  I did!  We introduced our boys to the Three Amigos last night.  While they watched (look up here, look up here!), I planned a project that I've had my eyes on for nearly a year: the Buttercup Bag from Mady by Rae!  I love the way it turned out.



I used two fabrics from Joel Dewberry's Aviary 2 line (Lilac Palette):


You can't really see it in my picture, but I used the very dead center print (purple and aqua damask) for the lining.  I'm not a purple girl, so that was somewhat out of my comfort zone, but I think it turned out great!

Overall, the bag is quite small, but suited for what I have in mind (outings wherein I need no diapers, toys, sippy cups, etc.).  I like it so much that I think I'm going to do as Rae suggested, and make one that's somewhat bigger, just for kicks.

I can't seem to make anything without tweaking it just a bit (am I the only one?), so here's what I did differently:

First off, I fussy cut my fabric so that I could have whole birds positioned away from the pleats, so I used a little more fabric that called for, but not much.  I got by with a 12" x 44" cut for the main fabric, and a 10" x 44" cut for the lining and two (the pattern calls for one) pockets, which I tweaked to fit my cell phone and a couple of pens.

I wanted it to have a little bit more body, so I lined it with a scrap of heavy weight fabric.  I cut them them identical to the main fabric pieces, basted them together, and treated them as one.  I haven't tried it without the lining, but I like the moderate rigidity that mine ended up having.

I cut the strap a little bit longer--an extra 4 inches, I believe.

Oh yeah . . . I also left off the button embellishment.  It's not that I don't like it, I just didn't have any cute buttons on hand, so I scrapped the idea. I'll probably go back later and add either buttons or a fabric flower.

Anyway, it was a great project, and I highly encourage you to give it a try!  If you don't know how to put on a magnetic snap, never fear, Rae's got a tutorial for that, too.  Who would have know it's so easy?  Not me! 

Since I was delinquent and never even introduced Joel Dewberry's Aviary 2 line to you, I'm going to do it now.  Here's the whole, beautiful thing:



In addition to the Lilac Palette seen above, there's two others.

Meet Granite:


And Saffron:



You can find all of these fabrics in my shop.

I'm off to Quilt Market this weekend.  Huh?  What's that?  Oh, yeah.  That's an industry trade show (or something like that, I've never actually *ahem* been before) wherein I wander around all weekend and look at tons and tons of newly released fabric from most every major designer out there.  I can browse, order, find new great stuff, and even, ack, meet the designers.  I'm majorly kind of terrified of that part.  Wish me luck.

Happy sewing!