Fun With The Other Wives

Today is my stop on the Farmers Wife In Your Life Blog Hop! The challenge was to make something other than a quilt with at least 1 farmers wife block. I immediately knew what I was going to make...a zipper bag. I can never have enough of them and love giving them as gifts filled with goodies. And the best part is that I brought a friend along on this hop :)

I am a member of the new Fort Worth Modern Quilt Guild and have met some great gals there. So I invited my new guild friend January, who blogs at Sew Sew Go,  to make a bag with me. It was a lot of fun teaching her how to make a bag, I don't know who was more excited to see her finished bag. And it was a pleasure since she is a very fast learner. Please make sure to visit her blog, you won't be sorry.

Since I have already done a tutorial on making a zipper bag in January, here's a link to the tutorial.

The only thing I changed is that I put a 1.5" border on the sides of the FW block, a 2" border on the top and a 2.5" on the bottom. This worked perfectly and the entire FW block is shown on the front without losing any of  the block to a seam allowance or the gusset.

Now for the eye candy. Here's the bag January made. She only had 7" zippers (lesson learned...always buy a zipper at least 14" long since you can always cut it down) so it was a bit of a challenge to figure out the quilt math. Once we had the border sizes correct it was a piece of cake. I just love how she fussy cut the top border, isn't is great?

And here's my bag

and a close up of the decorative stitching I did. I just love all the fancy stitches my Bernina can do and try to use them as often as possible.

This bag is going to quilting classes, retreats and sewing dates. It is going to be for my rotary cutters and scissors since my other bag is getting full.

I'd like to thank Sunni from Love Affair With My Brother for inviting me to be part of this fun blog hop. Make sure to check out all the other great projects from the other hoppers and to hop on board yourself on March 24th when the linky party begins. She has some great prizes!