A gift and a finish!

In January, I went away for a quilting weekend with my girls. As always, we ate, quilted, and laughed a lot. I love spending time with my quilting girls!

One of my friends, Isobel, made me a yummy quilted bag:

Tiffany blue!

Isobel probably has the highest level of technical sewing skills of anyone I know. The fact that she used those skills to bless me with this bag humbles me.

As I was looking at the bag, I kept thinking it looked familiar. She showed me the pattern and I realized that I own that one (Amanda's Purse).

After the retreat, I went to my box of patterns and it was not there. So I looked on my shelf of patterns and it was not there. Then I looked on my cutting table. And my bookcase. And every other surface in my sewing room. Nothing. Days later I was in a box checking out some half-done project and I found the pattern. Why it was there I do not know, but it is so exciting to find something that is lost!

I pulled out some lovely limey scraps from my stash and pieced up this purse. I decided to show my Sweet Sixteen some love, so I quilted the purse on my baby.

If you quilt your quilts by pushing fabric through a machine, you need Machingers Quilting Gloves. Yes, you really do!

I decided that lime green fabrics deserved some whacky quilting:

After installing a zipper, discovering that the zipper was broken, and then un-installing the zipper, I finally finished the purse (serious amounts of time elapsed):

I have different applique projects in my two lovely bags. I will think of my darling Isobel every time I touch either one.