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For this zipper bag, I was hoping to make a new toiletries bag for traveling. The Double zip gear bag by Annie’s looked perfect and I was super excited to make it!

So in the Spring and Summer, I like having a small purse that holds only my phone, wallet, keys, and a couple other small things when I need to run out for errands and such. I had a bag like this a few years ago (a Goodwill find), but it disintegrated and I hadn’t managed to find one I like since.

In the past year or so, I have spent a lot of time browsing different zip pouches and have seen so many creative ideas. When I came across this series of photos, I absolutely had to make it as a coin pouch for my youngest son, who is cat-crazy.

So this week I made the Brigitte needles & notions pouch using the free tutorial by Very Shannon. It’s a very cute little bag that I thought would be perfect to hold my two Addi-click interchangeable circular knitting needle sets. The cases that the sets come with are super bulky and I don’t really like them. They definitely are too big to travel with.

So this week I made a zipper pouch for my youngest son to hold his colored pencils. I wanted something that would open wide enough to expose all of the pencils so he could see and choose colors easily instead of rooting around in a dark pouch.

So I’m about to start another quilt with Quilter’s grid interfacing, but before I start I wanted to do a test run of the two different brands of gridded interfacing–Pellon and Bosal. Quilter’s grid interfacing is a fantastic product that is a lightweight fusible interfacing with a very light grid pre-printed on it.

So I thought I’d try the Rounded Reno makeup bag. it looked super small and cute in the photo! When I made it, it came out bigger than I was expecting, but I think the bigger size is probably more useful anyway.

So this week I came across this cute little zipped bowl that is meant to hold Wonder clips. Yes, please! This is perfect for taking with me to retreat and for sitting on my sewing table and as a bonus is ridiculously cute. It has a circle bottom so it stands up and opens into a bowl, with super easy access to the contents.

I’ve been wanting a larger tote to carry around my larger knitting or other projects. I’m testing a few different ones to see which is going to be the perfect one, though the reality is that I always have multiple projects on the go so this will let me have one bag for each.

This pouch is my second run through a Creative Maker case, a pattern by Sew Sweetness. Last time I made three of the Small size for teacher’s gifts. This time I made one of the Medium size for myself!

I have a Quilting retreat coming up and I thought, what better time than to make these Scissors cozies that I’ve been eyeing over at Sotak handmade… Only problem was that I have different scissors, so her templates didn’t work for mine. I decided to just wing it…

So this week I made the “Set to go” cosmetic case I found on Craftsy by Uniquely Michelle. I thought it had a super cute shape and I’ve been wanting to make more boxy bags.

One of my favorite blocks is the Raspberry kiss block by Wooden Spoon quilts. Of course, the original size is way too big to make more than a few for a zip pouch, so I googled and found Michael Ann Made had made some much smaller ones, but they still weren’t quite small enough. I had to minify them even more… These tiny blocks finish at 1.25″—the width of the Xs are only 0.25″.

So I decided to make a little pouch to hold my in-progress Sashiko embroidery project. I bought a pre-printed Sashiko panel years ago but never got to it and then this year at QuiltCon they had so many lovely ones in one booth that I was inspired to try again (and it helped that the friends I went with all got at least one too!).

This bag is called simply “The Cube”, by Penny Sturges at Quilts Illustrated. I’m on a mission to find the perfect doctor-style bag that has internal metal bars at the top opening (they’re called “stays”). This pattern came with one pair of the metal stays included, and you can also buy refills of the metal stays separately.

These pouches are Creative Maker cases, a pattern by Sew Sweetness. These were my teacher’s gifts this year, and I got them done at 4am on the last day of school. Phew! The covers are Essex linen in Natural, with a band of the lining fabric stitched on for an accent.

So this week I wanted to play with an extremely small amount of my completely out of control selvage collection. I sewed two sets of strips onto 6″ fabric foundations at a 30 degree angle, making one the mirror image of the other, and with a matching rainbow gradation on each side.

So this week I wanted to try something a little more graphic. I decided to try a freezer paper stencil of a Boston Terrier as a panel on the front of a pouch. I did the stencil on Essex Linen in Flax using Jacquard fabric paint.

So this week I decided to use a small scrap of this beautiful black/white/color speck fabric that I got at the Textile Center garage sale a few weeks ago. I think it was only $1-2. Based on how ridiculously soft it is I’m guessing it’s silk. I combined it with some black linen from a thrifted shirt.

So this week I thought I’d try making some Becca Bags by Lazy Girl designs. My daughter needed a toiletry bag big enough to hold a hairbrush and a bottle of spray detangler, and then I thought making a tiny matching bag to hold her hair ties and barrettes would be super cute.

So the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild had a crayon challenge that was due last week. The colors I drew were really not my thing but I figured I shouldn’t bail, so I made a zipper pouch with my colors, killing two birds with one stone. 🙂 We were allowed to add one additional fabric and I chose Essex yarn-dyed linen in Flax.