Preston Bag

At the stitching day at Lets Get Stitched we received some awesome patterns.
One I was keen to make before my trip to Tasmania was Dawn's "Preston Bag".  It has large pockets on the outside, and I knew that would be a handy thing for my plane trip - and it proved to be perfect.

I searched for a time to find the fabrics to use for this one, then found the book fabric, which I have used for the small pockets on each side of the stitched panel. It worked well with the stitched verse  "Home is where the story begins".  From there I could choose colours for the rest of the bag.

 I found this (Lynette Anderson) fabric with houses on would work with my other chosen fabrics, to make the back pockets.

I didnt have any twill tape/ribbon to use for along the handles, but found a length of this ribbon which was the right colour, and works beautifully.

Of course you cant have too many pockets, so I added some inside.  I hoped to have the large one (bottom of  pic below) with a zipper close, but time beat me, so it didnt happen.  But the pockets are  deep so are quite secure. 

  

I also used a bag weight wadding instead of pellon in the bag, as I wanted it to be more structured - mainly thinking of travelling and wanting it to be able to stand upright.

This is a fantastic bag, and  to buy the pattern go to Dawn's Craftsy Store here. Or contact Dawn if you have any problem with finding it.

Lets Get Stitched - part 1

It has been a challenge to know where to start to blog about our wonderful Lets Get Stitched weekend in Melbourne.  It was the most amazing 5 days of excitement, fun, shopping, friends, hugs, food, laughter, (a little) stitching, more shopping, more food, and definitely more hugs.

(thanks to Jenny - Elefantz for this wonderful photo of all 50 of us at the stitching day.)

After travelling from all parts of Australia and New Zealand, we booked into our accommodation at the Rydges Bell City at Preston.  I had the loveliest Roomies, Christine and Vicki.  How come we didnt take a photo of the 3 of us??? Massive oversight.

Friday saw 32 of us on a bus trip which took us to........ surprise surprise........  quilt shops.  Wow, did we help out the Melbourne economy on that day.

I can share only a part of my goodies as there were some gifts as well.

We had lunch and time for shopping at Sassafras, a small town in the Dandenong Ranges.  Lunch for us was pumpkin and cauliflower soup, and the nicest chocolate-est hot mocha I have ever tasted.  It was made on lindt chocolate.  Wendy (on the left) had iced chocolate, also made with lindt chocolate, and you can still see all the chocolate in the bottom of her glass.  Talk about decadent !!!!!

Friday night was our traditional pizza and games night, which caused much merriment and noise - so much so that security knocked on our door to say "too much noise and too many people in the room".  It did break up the party rather abruptly, but we would have to agree that it would have been way too noisy for the neighbouring rooms.

In the photo above we had to draw on that paper plate on our head, without looking at it, a sewing machine, scissors, cord, table, fabric, needle, etc.  Miche'le's drawing is below - she did very well, much more organised than mine turned out to be.

Here, these two are working out who has the largest shoes - part of the next game.  Jen was hopeful that her boots (background) would be the winner.   hmmm.  What do you think???

After our sudden interruption it was off to plan our "free day" activities.

(Thank you to other LGSers who posted photos, which I have used here.)