My New Bag

With no ulterior motive whatsoever, really, I so admired this shoulder bag that Roberta, our sewing machine guru at Empty Spools last week was wearing as she toured our classroom in the Open House. 

I could see my designs on it from 30 feet away!  They are the digitzed quilting/embroidery designs that are built in to the Bernina 830, but similar ones and more are available on my OESD CD "Quilting Whimsy," available for all embroidery machine formats. 

She used them as outline embroidery to embellish this soft and drapey bag, made with some changes to wholecloth rather than piecing from the La Borsa Bag pattern. 

She used Metrosene red/white/blue variegated thread, #40, and the double stitching and overlaps of the thread made it shimmer and blur so that it has an entirely different look.  I probably would never have done one of my designs like this so it was a delight to see how beautifully it turned out, how muted and elegant it looked on her shoulder.

The design square on the bottom is  my "Bouncing Bananas" motif, and looks amazing as well in this thread.  What Roberta did so well was use her creativity with the digitized designs to create something new and fresh. 

After gushing over this beautiful bag to my class the next morning, who should stroll in but Roberta, with bag, and she totally surprised me by giving it to me.  I was open mouthed with amazement, and a hug and thanks were all I had in exchange.  Thanks so much Roberta, I shall use it often and love it each time.

The designs on the Bernina 830 and my "Quilting Whimsy" CD can be sized and combined, rotated, whatever, to get the effect you want.  There are two designs for a large hoop.  The creativity is up to you. 

Using them as quilting in the quilt sandwich and placing it in your embroidery hoop, then doing some simple free motion work or walking foot lines around them to finish up a very fancy quilt makes these designs a great way to quilt your tops, or try out on table runners or placemats to get the hang of it. 

Or make a bag like this!

Hope you liked seeing this project, and keep quilting!  Your work gets better every day......

Diane