Rhonda Bracey: At Random

When I made a quilted tote bag for my laptop a week or so ago, my good friend Char from Boston was very taken with it and asked how much it would cost for me to make one for her. Well, as anyone who’s tried to price craft knows, the cost is horrendous if you include labour (and as one of these bags takes 4 to 5 hours to make, that’s not a cheap exercise). So we left it at that…

Meantime, I decided to make her one anyway as a surprise! I’m actually writing this blog entry on March 19, some 10 days before it will appear. I want to make sure that it doesn’t get published before I have a chance to hand over the bag and surprise her! I’ll be meeting Char at Seattle Airport on March 28 (our flights arrive within 45 mins of each other) and we’re rooming together for the conference we’re both attending and speaking at. I’ll give her the laptop bag then — along with the Dragonfly quilt that she knows she’s getting.

I did ask her the size of her laptop and what colours she likes, in case I had some time to make her a bag… with no promises of course! She said she likes all colours (that makes it hard…), but preferably not pink. We have a mutual friend who is a pink person and she knew that our friend — who is also going to the conference — would want it if it was pink!

I hunted through my stash looking for something appropriate. Japanese navy and maroon? (classy and subdued) Celtic brown/gold and brown? reds? yellows? (too garish for an office environment — Char regularly travels to client offices and meetings), greens? Then I saw it… the blue Aboriginal fabric I’d purchased over the internet some time back just over a year ago. Char’s been to Australia and I’m pretty sure she’s been to the Great Barrier Reef (she’s been to Queensland, at least), so I thought it would be perfect — a little touch of Australia every time she uses the bag. I found a matching blue with green spot fabric and put it together for her.

Here’s how it turned out:

Char's laptop bag

Free motion quilting as shown on the lining

Fabric detail and free motion quilting

Free motion quilting - metallic and rayon threads