Earth Day Save the Planet, Joel Dewberry True Colors Shopping Bag

We have teamed up with Creativebug to offer some great classes from our True Colors designers.  Joel Dewberry and his wife Laurie share this great tote project... who doesn't need another tote bag to carry their groceries around in?

Joel and Laurie combine their love of colorful fabric with sewing know-how to make a stunning and sturdy farmer's market tote bag. Both the interior and exterior of the bag are pieced together with eye-catching fabrics. Laurie walks you through the steps for constructing the bag from the inside out, and covers details like adding fusible interfacing and making pockets. Once the sides of the bag are assembled, she shows you how to add the bottom of the bag and hand-sew the opening closed with a slipstitch. A little decorative top stitching gives the finished bag a polished look.  Click here to listen to Joel and Laurie talking about the tote.

Joel Dewberry's True Colors Collection

 

 

National Sewing Month!

September is here and that means National Sewing Month! We’ll be celebrating all month long with some fun posts and fabric. We asked a few bloggers to help inspire you with easy-to-make projects in beautiful FreeSpirit fabrics. Each week during the month of September we will bring you a tutorial for a fun project from a different blogger. And at the end of the month, we’ll be giving away fabric. You won’t want to miss any of it!

Today, we kick things off with the perfect quilting accessory made from FreeSpirit Florence by Denyse Schmidt. The Mat Carrier by Melissa Peda fits an 18” square cutting mat with a pocket on the back for patterns, snips, threads, etc. The pattern uses an 18” finished quilt block for the front panel, although you can easily substitute a simple square in your favorite print. Click on the photo above for the PDF of this handy carrier.

The pictured project features a modified quilt block from Denyse Schmidt’s Between The Lines quilt pattern. The block is used with permission by Denyse Schmidt and is not part of the pattern which is available now at dsquilts.com and at local quilt shops.

We hope you’ll join us as we celebrate sewing. If you have a favorite sewing memory, please share it with us. We’d love to hear who first taught you to sew!