Journal Notes

This insanity started when I took a bag making class in August 2025 and made the first out of African Wax Fabrics (AWF). It was fun and relatively simple. I had also cut out the flamingo bag and made the pocket but hadn’t finished. In January during Karen Brown’s declutter challenge I was all about using up stash. I have no idea why I bought the Decoupage fat quarters. Gorgeous stuff but SO not my usual style. And I had tons of AWF including a bunch of fat quarters. Quiltcon Raleigh was coming up and I was going to see quite a few of my TT24 and TT25 friends (Karen’s textile tours) so got this wild and crazy idea that I would make them all iron bags! I immediately quilted up the fat quarters and started the process of organizing everything. I had 7 separate fat quarters, none of them alike, 8 if you counted the unfinished flamingo bag. What the hell was I thinking?! The bag class instructor, Dr Vanessa Love, who is awesome, is a fussy cutter and queen at details. Picking that up from her, I couldn’t simply cut cut sew. I needed coordinating fabrics, webbing and zippers and something special on each front pocket. I was limited because I only had one fat quarter for each bag so the interiors and pockets had to be different fabrics. Lining was easy, but what about the interior and exterior pockets? What about binding? Combine that with 8 different webbings, 8 different zippers (actually more because I used different zippers for some of the front pockets)… oh and then I decided most needed bag charms and labels. Yes. Insanity. Do I ever do anything the easy way?! (Ok...does any quilter/maker do things the easy way?) It took me 2 weeks to pull it all together and laid out on my office floor. Finally, I was ready to start sewing. It started as a slog. There was no way to chain piece. I was already changing thread colors too often and that would have made it worse. But after the first 2 I got into a groove and by the last one I had it all down to near perfection. Whew and yay! I hauled my little herd of iron bags to Raleigh and everyone seemed to be happy with their new little bags. I was, too, but don’t ask me to make you one!