Experimenting with a New Construction

I made a vinyl fronted project bag yesterday. There were several mistakes, which to the untrained eye, wouldn't be a problem, but I wasn't completely happy with the result. For one, I forgot to topstitch on the fabric close to the vinyl, so that binding can just flip up. Oops! I didn't realize it until I had all the binding finished. It also took me several tries to get the binding ends joined properly. 

I should have put the quilted squares on the inside facing out the vinyl rather than on the back. I also didn't like how tall it was. There were also several attempts to connect the binding ends correctly. You would think I had lots of practice doing it on the four placemats (below). Harumph!

I started quilting lines out 1/4" from the seam lines. I then realized that was going to take a lot of time and thread. I then remembered how well the diagonal criss cross quilting lines worked on the 'ugly' placemats I made a while ago. I just stitched corner to corner through the white squares.

So I picked out the few lines I had stitched and did the diagonal criss crosses.

I sewed the binding onto the vinyl side and hand-stitched it onto the quilted side. 

However, my hand-sewing was visible through the vinyl along the binding edges. Argh!

I wanted to have it done for tomorrow so I decided to make another one. Being 7 squares by 6 squares, I needed 21 - 2.5" squares of dark and light respectively. Dividing by 4 I only needed a total of 6 dark charm squares and 6 light charms squares. There are 42 in a pack and I used 12 yesterday so there were plenty left for me to remake it.

I didn't think it completely through and cut binding strips instead of making the back fabric 1" bigger on all sides and folding it over to the front and stitching it into place as a binding. Oh well. To make it a bit shorter, I increased the seam allowance a bit on the horizontal seams. Overall I'm much happier with how it turned out. 

Of course I had to fashion a coordinating zipper pull from beads in my stash.

I think the recipient will be delighted.

And finally, I got my stitches out yesterday and according to the pathology report, the skin cancer was ‘completely excised’. So glad to have that dramatic chapter behind me.