Liberty Boxy Pouch

Liberty and Linen boxy pouch. 

In between my EPP project and working on the baby quilt for my old roommate I had to sneak in a project for myself. I thought I was sick of my Liberty scraps, but I saw them peaking out of that scrap bucket and just had to play around with them. I decided to pair the scraps with some linen, possibly essex linen, but I'm not sure. I made a whole bunch of half square triangles using the last of my leftover scrappy trip squares and the linen. Then, I machine quilted diagonal lines roughly half an inch apart, roughly parallel to the diagonals in the triangles. Note my aversion to precision.

Quilted triangles. Love the resulting texture, both between textiles and with the added quilting. 

I ended up compiling different parts of different tutorials to make this pouch. One of my favorite parts is the zipper. I bought some metal zippers off of etsy, and I had some leather scraps from a friend. This has encouraged me to obsess over leather zipper pulls, although making them is another story.

Zipper pull. I can make it better!

I like how quilting the outer panels adds enough structure to the bag that it can stand on its own, without adding so much bulk that all the seams are impossible to sew without breaking a needle (no needles lost during the making of this bag). I did end up adding extra strips of fabric along the top of my panels before quilting because I realized there was no way I'd get a decent sized bag otherwise. I like the effect, although I wish I'd been able to cut it straighter. The panels warped a little bit during the quilting process.

All Liberty, all the time. 

The interior lining is a magenta pink linen. It was not fun to work with. Considering how many seams I had to unpick and resew, linen was a terrible choice. There was so much fraying! (Lesson noted, but probably not learned.)  

Close up of the lining, and a little zipper detail. 

For my next boxy pouch, I've got some great NEON fabric. I've been mulling over some construction ideas for a while. I'm hoping I'll get the chance to MAKE it soon, and then I might even SHARE it! In the meantime, I'll be binding that baby quilt!