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

I must say I’m impressed with the laptop bag I made. When I was going through security at Perth and Melbourne airports, it made it really simple to take the laptop out. And on the flight from Melbourne to LA, I just slid the bag out with the laptop and the bits and pieces, put it into the seat pocket in front of me until I needed to use it, and it was all ready and waiting for me without having to deal with the heavy roll-on laptop case in the overhead locker.

So it’s ‘fit for purpose’, works exactly as I wanted it to, and will get quite a bit of use in the coming years, I expect!

My friend Bobbie forward me the link to this fun site! The Quilters of South Carolina created one-of-a kind bras for Breast Cancer awareness; the exhibition is touring South Carolina until October 2009. Details and all pictures (and clever names) of these fabulous bras are available from:
http://www.quiltersofsc.org/artfullbras/artfullbras.htm

Here are just a couple of these gorgeous creations copied from the website:

'Fall Festival'

'Look at them melons!'

'Boo-bies!'

Problem: My new laptop is a big one — 17″ I think — so my old laptop bag was too small and I had to get a new one. It’s like a mini-suitcase so is quite bulky and heavy. The old laptop bag had an inner sleeve which was very handy in aircraft — you just pulled out the sleeve and you were ready to go without having to pull down the whole laptop bag from the overhead compartment. Not so the new one. No sleeve. And pulling this mini-suitcase down from the overhead locker is not a viable option.

Solution: I created a quilted laptop bag using some really nice Celtic fabric I had! Problem solved — I can now grab this bag out of the larger carry-on bag, and have ready the power supply, mouse, and even space for a notebook and pen… all without disturbing others and without ending up with the big bag on my head!

I adapted a pattern for a Tote Bag I already had from Michelle Pearson at Raggedy Stitches. I made it smaller, and didn’t do all the fancy piecing, though I did quilt the fabric. It’s fully lined and I adapted the front (lined) pocket so that I had room for the power supply, an A4 notepad, and a shorter and narrower pocket for my mini-mouse and a pen or two.

Here’s the finished laptop bag — click on each thumbnail to get a larger picture:

One of the ladies on an email discussion list I’m one was chatting the other day about how her mother made fancy dress costumes for her and her sister when they were kids. Nothing unusual about that for those of my vintage. And then she said this:

She also made us matching bathing suits out of orange plaid seersucker. Her sewing machine was a weapon of mass humiliation.

I’ve never thought of a sewing machine like that, but I can see how for some people home-made clothes were more than an embarrassment. Orange plaid seersucker bathers? Wow.

An American quilter based with the US military in Alice Springs (Australia) decided to do something for the families left homeless and without possessions as a result of the devastating bushfires in Victoria.

So she put out an appeal to all her quilting friends for blocks, and it has spread far and wide (see http://campfollowerbags.blogspot.com/2009/02/bushfire-quilt-project.html).

Her suggestion was for 12.5 inch maverick or wonky star blocks, and someone else put up a tutorial on how to create a wonky star. She has a team of quilters who will put the blocks together in a ‘quilt-a-thon’, but she must receive them by the end of March 2009 as she’s due to return to the US soon.

I did two blocks, and will post them on Monday. Here are the photos:

Wonky Star 1: Peppers

Wonky Star 2: Chillis

It’s finished!

Well, it’s been finished since mid-January for a few weeks, but the day I was due to collect it from Judy (the quilter) was the day we had a bushfire come close to town and Judy was exhausted from helping feed the firefighters and we were packing up essentials in case we had to evacuate.

Once I got it back from Judy, I had to make and add the binding, and hand stitch it down. Not something you want to do in hot weather! I finished that a couple of weeks back, but until today, I hadn’t done the final clean up of loose threads, fluff etc. nor put it on the bed and taken photos of it. But today was the day!

Judy did a fabulous job of the quilting — she used a variegated thread on the top and black in the bobbin (my choice) and she lined the back up really well so it’s square with the border. This allows me to flip the quilt over and display the back if I feel like coffee colours for a change.

Here are some pics of the finished quilt.

Log cabin quilt on bed

Judy's great quilting (front)

Back of quilt (disappearing 9-patch)

Back of quilt showing quilting

See also:

• Log Cabin Quilt: 1
• Log Cabin Quilt: 2
• Log Cabin Quilt: 3 (mini quilts—side project)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 4 (sewing the blocks)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 5 (putting the top together)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 6 (making the back)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 7 (the completed back)
• Log Cabin Quilt: 8 (finished — this post)

Ever wanted a fabric design or colour, but you just can’t find what you’re looking for in the fabric stores? (yes, I know… all those fabrics and not ONE matches what’s in your head!)

Then try creating your own design (or getting a copyright-free antique image from the internet), uploading the image to Spoonflower, and getting it printed on Moda cotton in just the size you want — fat quarters, half a yard, yardage, etc. Even a swatch so you can see what it looks like before you go ahead and by yards of it.

You can see a short (4 min) video on the process here: http://blog.spoonflower.com/FAQ-Index.html

The prices are a little more than you’d pay in a store, but you get EXACTLY what you want. They ship to international destinations too, and take orders by credit card or PayPal.

[Thanks to Suzanne who alerted me to this cool site! First you could make your own books — now you can make your own fabric…]