"Make Me Up Before You Go-Go"

I finally get to show you my latest sewing project! It's called the Make Me Up Before You Go-Go bag, and the pattern is by the very talented Erin Erickson. Here's my little bag:

The body of it measures about 6 inches high by 10 inches wide.

I took a few pics while I was working on it, just to give you an idea of what went into it. It involved a little bit of quilting! This white flower on the one end, as well as the rest of the bigger flowers are all quilted. It was fun to stitch around them!

The main reason I decided to do this bag first (rather than a different one out of that green fabric) is because it called for Soft and Stable interfacing, which I'd never tried before, and I wanted to see what it was like before I tried putting it into any other bag. It's kind of foamy:

I liked it a lot! It was easy to sew, very nice and puffy for quilting, and flexible yet gave a lot of stability to the sides of the bag. I will definitely be using it again!

The hardest part of the whole project (other than my usual decision-making on fabrics, etc.) was putting the binding around the corners on the ends. This is what I was dealing with, lotsa layers:

The Wonder Clips were a Wonder-ful help. I think the best part of using them was that I wasn't repeatedly running my hand into the ends of pins and trying to keep from bleeding on the fabric. :)

Here's a closeup of some more of the quilting:

The bag opens nice and wide, so you can see what you've got in there. It has a zippered top, a divided pocket on one side of the inside,

and a zippered pocket on the other side:

Here's how the other end (my best one) turned out:

I made this cute little bag to keep for myself! I plan to use it to store some of the helpful little tools I've collected along the way that are now cluttering a table top but don't get used very often. This will be the perfect place for them.

In case anyone's wondering about the wicked-looking tools, that's my applique scissors, my sixth-finger-stiletto, and a hemostat that I used for stuffing dolls. The fabric I used is called Wildflower, and it's from the Dusk line of Jess's Outside Oslo collection.

I did a bit more of a pattern review for Jess's blog, so if you're interested, head on over there to read it.