You never know if summer is really ending in South Texas. True, we had one full day of rain, that’s almost like a sign, but the temperatures are still flirting with the triple digits.
The semester is on full force, assignments are flying in, the first wave of cold viruses has hit the campus… and me too.
Where did the summer break go?
A bit of it in the company of my daughters. Their visits are special now that they’re in charge of their own lives, because when they come to visit, it’s because they want to and they choose to, and not because they’re just coming home.
I’m a sappily proud mom and I’ll brag about their achievements whenever I get a chance.
I’ve crafted quite a bit this summer, although not as much as I imagined I would. On the other hand, I made a few things that are more practical than I thought they would be… Doesn’t that balance it all out?
I made a purse.
That was the start of my maker summer. It’s not perfect — after all, I’d never made such a big and complex purse — but it’s a good one, because it really came out the way I imagined it.
And I do use it.
It has enough little side pockets to hold pens, and my phone, and the random receipt, and other what-nots,
I’m happy with the way the piecing and quilting worked out for the outside. And I’m very satisfied with the inner pockets.
The project started as a fusion of two ideas: a container/organizer concept, and a free-hand quilting concept.
For the inside, I wanted a space large enough to hold my bullet journal, my phone, some pens, and random other stuff.
For the outside, the motivating concept for the entire project was a “landscape” quilt. If I can find the original post that got me going I sure will link it here, but honestly, I diverged almost immediately from the “landscape” design.
I kept the slightly uneven horizontal stripes of the original idea. But I didn’t have the fabrics needed for the beautiful, subtle landscape shading. Instead, I worked with the pretty, but random, fabrics I had, and tried to put them together into an eye-pleasing pattern.
The rest, really, is a matter of standard purse construction, and I’m not sure I’ve achieved control, never mind mastery.