Shift in Direction

My inkblot layout has been on the wall for months (see photo below).  I bought green fabric for the background over a month ago.  Next step was to start cutting and sewing.  So imagine my surprise after cutting a few pieces I stopped.  

Nope.  This wasn't working.

String Backpack

As I was making my new dance bag, I realized how shabby my little string backpack was.  It was some freebee from Rob's work years ago that happened to be a really useful size.  I've used it a lot over the years.  It's faded, dirty and is starting to develop a few holes.  Time to replace it!  

I dug through my orphaned blocks for inspiration and discovered a handful of blue and green four-patches that I don't even remember putting together.  Must have been some experiment that failed to launch.  There were enough pieces to make the bag with two four-patches left over.  Perfect.

The pieced sides by themselves could easily pull apart so I backed them with some fabric and ran some wavy lines of stitching over them to hold them all together.  Then I stitched the sides and the bottom and rolled over a sleeve on top for the string.  I bound the inside seams so there were no raw edges.

Dance Bag

The tote bag that holds my dancing stuff was starting to fray.  I could have repaired it, but bag was both too big (for regular dances) and too small (for dance festivals) and didn't have enough pockets.  This was my chance to design a new one:  a single bag that would work for both situations so I wouldn't need to move the odds and ends from one bag to another.