Hiya friends! I want to share with you my first sewing award. This summer I entered my bag into our State Fair’s quilted accessories class, and, I placed second! It’s the Poolside Tote from Noodlehead (pattern link here) and I made it with Cotton + Steel’s Poolside fabric collection (see the collection here). Cottons on the outsides and handles, and linen on the inside.
The judges liked my work, but there’s a few things I want to share with you:
In this tote, I chose to use a fusible foam to give it sturdiness, but, I learned a hard lesson when the fusing caused an all out war between myself and the wrinkles that ensued. Fusing is not necessary for the foam. From now on I am using a non-fusing foam, like Annie’s Soft and Stable (find it here) which has been awesome. It comes in white and black, too!
Then, I made one variation of the Noodlehead pattern. The instructions call for two rows of stitching along the top edge. Look at my picture and see – I only did one row. I chose to forego the second row as I predicted the chances of two rows being evenly spaced at a very low odds! I hand stitched down the facing (that’s the inner accent fabric) edge on the inside. If you have any questions about this modification, post in the comments below and I will answer.
xo
lakardia.wordpress.com 