A fascination with bags

This past weekend I felt like doing some sewing, I did my block of the month quilt square but I felt like doing something else too, but not a quilt per say.  A few weeks ago I had made this bag, from a pattern I picked up at Quilter's Way in Concord ma.

Is a patchwork bag..I love the sandcrab in the middle.  It adds just a little bit of funk to it.  This is a very soft bag, its been lined and quilted around the fabric squares.  These are Kofu squares, slightly heaver printed japanese shirting fabrics.  The bag I lined with with some cool grey/red/black dragon fabric I had stashed.  And its just big enough to hold a large sweater project or several small ones

See?  So i had fun with this, and I learned something new.  So i decided I wanted to do something else, smallish just to see how it would go.  I ended up making two things..a little zip pouch and a small clutch.

   

very cute...and i learned how to sew in a zipper!  Not bad for the first one.  I was so pleased by this little experiment that I decided to go a bit bigger and made this clutch for myself.

Stash fabric and a stash button!  One I had picked up this fall at Rhinebeck.  Its just a little different and  think adds to the bag.  You can see the deep crimson red I used for the lining.

Both of these projects came from this book...and I would recommend it to anyone newish to sewing and looking for small projects but instant gratification.  There are some larger ones in here to do, like some more bags...We'll have to see how much trouble I can get into to.

On a side note, I'm going to start trying to post on Fridays/weekends once a week. With school and work its just too hectic for me to do so more regularly until June..we're aiming for starting this weekend...maybe with some beaded knitting pictures if the weather ever clears enough for me to get good shots!