Log cabin tote

Happy Friday!  The kids are completing their first week of back to school; son is a Junior in High School and daughter is in 6th starting at the Middle School.  I guess summer is officially over for us although we're still deep into our summer fog season and hope there are many warm days in Fall ahead of us.

One drawback to working on long-term (somewhat tedious) quilting projects is missing that satisfaction of completing a project from conception to the finished item in just a day or two.  With this in mind, I decided to put aside my FWS and wiped out a tote bag for my daughter's friend for her 11th birthday.

Log cabin tote bag

I used mainly batiks which no one seems to like these days, at least on flickr.  I have a bunch of batiks in my stash in green which I'm not a big fan of but had purchased to make a quilt for my son and ended up never using.  I added some Jane Sassaman prints to the mix.

back of tote

Bag is constructed with a layer of batting (quilted to the front) and a simple lining.  I didn't care if this bag lacked structure but I usually do add some interfacing to my bags, and this could've easily been done if I so desired.

free-motion feathers

I've made a lot of simple totes, so this came together easily.   I thought this was a good opportunity to practice my free motion quilting skills so I quilted a meandering feather filler on the back of the bag.  You can see the quilting much better from the batting side.  The front is quilted simply in the ditch around the log cabin design.

Speaking of free motion quilting, here's a peek at my Swirling Leaves table topper quilt.  I'll  be sharing the completed quilt on my blog soon.