Artquiltmaker Blog – Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity

Morsel Lunch Bag

I forgot to post about the lunch bag I made for Friend Julie for Christmas. This was a project from Minikins Season 1. Season 1 includes the I Spy pouch pattern, which is one of my favorites. The Cotton Candy pouch is another of which I have made several. I knew that I had this pattern when I decided to make her a lunch bag.

I noticed that she was carrying her lunch around in a plastic bag. There is nothing wrong with plastic bags, especially with messy food. I thought it was odd. I thought I would try this pattern and hope it was a useful bag.

The first thing I did was get some ripstop nylon in order to make the inside sort of water resistant. I was inspired by Lynette using it for her Oxbow. Hers came out flat and beautiful. Mine came out bubbly and lumpy despite using Lynette’s tips. I have a feeling the ripstop I used was lesser quality than what Lynette used.

The pattern had no interior pockets. I guess a person just tosses all their lunch items in and pockets aren’t really needed.I keep thinking of regular bags and pockets are always useful.

I decided, based on my lunch bag, that I needed to include an ice pack. I added a mesh pocket for an ice pack. I thought a mesh pocket would better for something that might sweat. I included an ice pack (not shown) before I wrapped the gift.

The bag is on the small side, so no 5 person picnics.

The top has a recessed zipper, so the contents are out of the way of the handles. It might have been useful to include a shoulder strap, but I didn’t think of it.

In general, I am pretty happy with how this bag came out. Julie has brought it to a couple of Sew Days and that is really nice to see. I am definitely happy that I was able to use another Minikins pattern.

All the Enigmas

I am thinking about making some Enigma pouches again. I wanted to know what I had made and came up with these versions.

Finished: Enigma Bag - closed (MaryC) — Finished: Enigma Bag – closed (MaryC)

Six is a pretty good number, but there is still scope for making more.

Niece #2’s Christmas Pillowcase

Michaela's Christmas pillowcase — Michaela’s Christmas pillowcase

In the course of figuring out the Chair/Tufted Tweets repair, I found out Niece #2 no longer had her Christmas pillowcase. This all started when I brought over a Christmas pillowcase to her new-ish husband as part of my project to fill in the missing pillowcases for new family members. It is probably at her parents’ house, but I decided to make her a new one rather than trying to track an old one down.

This pillowcase has a slightly different color scheme from normal Christmas pillowcases. I like it and I hope she does as well.

Riveting

I know I have talked about MaryC’s rivet press quite a bit lately. I thought I would do a post about it, so you could learn more.

You can see Mary’s rivet press in the photo, left. It is about 2 feet tall and not very wide. In order to make it work, you have to insert a die into the top (under the spring) and on the bottom (under my black fabric). Before inserting rivet, it is important to make a hole in your fabric. Mary has a leather punch tool for that (see photo below), which makes it very easy. Then the rivets are easy to insert through the fabric. They click together, so they don’t fall apart as you insert them into the rivet press. Then the fun part: smash them with the press. We put a piece of fabric between the rivet and the die to keep the rivet from getting scratched. That’s an after market tip. 😉

The leather punch can make different sized holes by turning the wheel on the top.

I used Chicago Screws once and sincerely disliked the look. They were not tight in the fabric. Once rivets have the fabric pressed between them, the fabric is not going to move. The rivets are tight against the fabric.

Mary's hardware box — Mary’s hardware box

Mary got all different dies when she got her rivet press and I think this makes sense. Yes, it is more money, but then you have all the dies you need and you don’t have to figure out which one you don’t have. Or worse, you find you don’t have the one die you need to finish your project.

Mary uses the same system for her hardware that she does for her rivets and dies. She puts different sizes in smaller boxes, then they all go in a larger box. This keeps everything together and available when needed.

A Few More Four Patch Fun Blocks

I am not cutting any more foreground pieces for this quilt. I am trying to finish blocks for which I have foreground cut. Thus I have a few more blocks made.

Pillowcase Repair Complete

Tufted Tweets pillowcase- repaired (chairs)

I finally finished repairing my niece’s Tufted Tweets pillowcase! Hooray! It took me awhile to get to it (Pandora Charisma!), but now I just have to take it over to her. This has been hanging around since December 12-ish.

Not only was the cuff ripping off, but there was also a hole in the fabric, so I covered it with an appliqued heart. The heart was a quick and dirty job.

The Pandora Charisma is Finished

Pandora Charisma - front, finished — Pandora Charisma – front, finished

I am into sneak peeks lately! You got one the other day about this finished Pandora Charisma.

Yep!

Finished! Done! Complete!

I powered through a lot of the finishing steps, which were the hardest, on Friday so the bag could be done for the Month 1: UFO challenge reveal.

When I brought it to Sew Day, as mentioned, I wanted to add some additional rivets, but for all intents and purposes, it was done before I did that. I am pretty pleased with it, though I know there are things I could do better and want to do better.

Pandora Charisma - back, finished — Pandora Charisma – back, finished

I am really pleased with the back. I think it looks awesome and I can’t really believe that I made it using all the weird substrates.

The zippers look good, but I wasn’t happy with the way the teeth were so high up from the zipper tape (the teeth were not flush or flush-ish with the tape). Also, there was something strange about the zipper tape. I am going to use a different brand when I make this bag again, maybe Wawak or ByAnnie continuous zippers next time. Using the continuous zipper was good for small zipper areas like the back zipper shown on the photo, right. The teeth were too high, but I had to secure the zipper with fabric, so the stitches looked ok. In general, though the high teeth kept me from making nice straight stitches. It was good that I had enough continuous zipper yardage to have the same zipper tape on all of the many zippers required for this bag.

Pandora Charisma - large pocket, open — Pandora Charisma – large pocket, open

There are a lot of pockets and places to hold stuff in this bag. The front pocket is like a regular purse area. the main area has a mesh pocket, which will keep things safe but handy and a slip pocket. The leash is very useful for keys, but also for attaching anything you don’t want to lose. That leash could be made of ribbon, tiny webbing or leather.

Pandora Charisma - tablet pocket, open — Pandora Charisma – tablet pocket, open

The back pocket has a small tablet sleeve, which is padded to keep your Kindle, iPad or other type of tablet safe. The pocket opens a lot more narrowly, so you have to use that side for items that can be slipped in and out.

The most challenging part of this bag can be seen in the photo, left, and that is the binding. The final step, which, seriously, almost made me give up, is putting the bag together then binding the edges. It is really hard to shove so many layers under the needle and get it to look ok. I did one side of some of the bindings by hand, which was a big effort, but looked a lot better than my first binding by machine. My binding effort is not stellar, but I was able to finish.

I do want to make another. I plan to borrow my mom’s 1960s Emdeko machine, which is one of those all metal machines that can sew through anything. I also plan to go through the pattern while I have the bag at hand and decide which pockets I can sew in vinyl, which need more interfacing, etc, so I am more prepared next time. I also want to count up all the hardware I used so I have matching hardware when I make the next one.

I am really pleased that I finished it and plan to take some time to relax with some easy projects.

Amazing Sew Day

We had an amazing Sew Day over the weekend. At the peak, we had more than 30 people sewing and socializing. We get that many at our holiday party, but I am not sure we have ever had that many at a regular Sew Day. I knew we might have some new people, so we set up some extra tables in advance. We still didn’t have enough seats. I guess the message is that people need to show up on time if they want a seat. 😉

We had the 8YO son of our Founder join us. He is working with his mom to make a quilt for his bed. This means we are encouraging the younger generation to get into sewing. He was very focused!

We had another parent/’child’ team as well. Roberta is a new member who brought her daughter Michelle. They intend to work on projects together, which is a great way to get together.

I brought the Pandora Charisma, which needed a few more steps, some of which were riveting. Mary helped me use her rivet press to add a few more rivets to various places on the bag. I am super happy with the riveting.

News Flash: the Pandora Charisma is finished. People were really impressed. I just felt tired after struggling with it for so many weeks (which feels like years!).

SueS is having a problem with her hand, so I offered to cut some pieces out for her. She was very well organized, so the task was easy. She also stood with me and kept me on track, which was great. I brought a ruler that was the exact size of the pieces she needed, which made the task easier. All-in-all a good effort.

The UFO Challenge Team had a mini-show and tell where finished and in-progress #12 items were shown. Not everything got finished, but everyone was inspired to work on a project that had been sitting around for a long time.

They also drew the next number, #9 was selected. For me, that is an extra large project bag. I have the fabric quilted, but need to cut out the other pieces and put the whole thing together.

Tim's Jittery Wings quilt — Tim’s Jittery Wings quilt

Later in the day, I also started cutting out the Tadpole pouches. Now that I am done with the Pandora Charisma, I am going to work on some easier projects. While I was doing that Tim was working on one of his Jittery Wings quilts.

The picture shows the start of it and it just got better the more he put up on the wall.

Mary decided a few weeks ago to create a design wall that we could put up and take down. She came with a big piece of Velcro and installed it. The next step is making a piece of felt big enough to cover the space. We only had a small piece of felt, but Tim agreed to make a larger one. It will be great and the location is awesome: right next to some large windows.

I raced around so didn’t get time to catch up with many people, but I chatted to some and that was great.

Portland: Sewcial Studies

No, I am not in Portland at the moment.

I never got around to talking about Sewcial Studies after I returned from Portland in the Fall.

I went with Cheryl and Amanda. Sewcial Studies is in Milwaukie on a cute little street with a variety of shops including a chocolatier and a bookstore.

Sewcial Studies, a very small store, describes itself as an ‘art and craft’ store. While we were there, a woman was learning how to make a shirt, or some kind of garment.

One side of the store (shown, left) houses supplies you can buy: fabric, notions, etc. The collection of items isn’t large, but everything is high quality and a little unique. The red table in the center of the photo really intrigued me. I couldn’t help but think it looked like a billiard table.

On the other side of the store is the class/lessons/sewing side. I didn’t take a good picture of the whole side, but you get an idea of what it looks like. There were 3-4 tables with sewing machines where people could sew. I was intrigued to see different brands, models and vintages of machines. While having the same machines would be good for troubleshooting, getting used high quality machines might be more cost effective.

I really wanted to buy these pattern weights even though I didn’t need them. They were so cool looking and would have been great for shapes I needed to cut using a paper pattern.

They were on the pricey side, though, and I decided not to spend so much on an impulse buy. I don’t see them on their website so either they are too pricey to mail or I missed my chance.

One cool service they have are Open Sews. The charge is only $10/hour and they happen everyday the shop is open. You get to use their tools, machines, and get help if you should need it.

The coolest thing in the shop was their rivet press. I know I am obsessed with rivet presses right now, but this one was super cool the way it was embedded (inserted?) into an old sewing machine cabinet. OMG! Such a great idea. Also, the turquoise ‘plate’ is awesome.

I don’t think the sewing cabinet top opens anymore, but it would be great if the rivet press could be stored inside the cabinet as well. I think the height prevents it.

I wasn’t as focused on the store as I normally am, but I still saw enough to know that I like it. It is also a GREAT idea! I love the idea of dropping into to sew with others when it fits into your schedule.

Let me know if you go visit.

Tel:(503) 303-9143
suzanne@sewcialstudies.com
10835 SE Main Street
Milwaukie, OR 97222

Store Hours:
Sunday 12-5pm
Monday 10am-6pm
Tuesday Closed
Wednesday-Saturday 10am – 6pm

Birthday Gifts for Me

I was fortunate to get a number of fabulous gifts for my birthday, which was in January.

Julie topped up my fabric supply with some mini Pearl bracelets plus a couple of other pieces (far right) that were used as wrapping. I have an idea for the teal Art Gallery Round Elements.

There were other gifts as well. I can always use cards (also from Julie) as I send a lot of them out to friends. Mary gave me a couple of packs of continuous zipper tape while Tim found a wild button pouch that is super unique.

You know I like paper folding. The origami paper might help me finish the Mette Rings I started as a Fair entry last year (?)

Recently, I received a lovely bunch of gifts from Carrie, both Christmas and birthday at the same time as we haven’t been able to get together. Carrie has been experimenting with Kraftex and I am always excited to see what she has made. I was fortunate enough to receive a pouch (upper right) and a business card holder. I have also been reading about Kraftex in the book she gave me and am planning a journal cover or two.

I bullied, a little, Carrie into making journal covers for composition books as raffle prizes. I wanted people to have something to make notes on at guild meetings. I was the fortunate recipient of a composition book and cover, too!

I received a few other things, which was very nice. The best was the calls, cards, and messages from far flung friends and family. Thank you!

JayeL on All the EnigmasSaturday, February 21, 2026
Yes, I am not done with that pattern yet.
JayeL on All the EnigmasSaturday, February 21, 2026
LOL! I love making bags. It challenges my brain. I am in awe of your crocheting! It's not my 'thing'…
JayeL on RivetingSaturday, February 21, 2026
It is so fascinating. I see a rivet press in my future.
JulieZS on All the EnigmasFriday, February 20, 2026
That's a lot of Enigmas! Definitely room for at least a few more.
Sherri D on All the EnigmasFriday, February 20, 2026
I am so in awe of your bag works! Yes, I know I could probably make some too, but it's…

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