Moda Bake Shop leftovers bonus tutorial

I am so happy to announce that today I have a quilt featured over at the Moda Bake Shop!
My quilt is ''Renaissance Waves'' and was made with a jelly roll of 'Redwork Renaissance' and some yardage from the same line.  Here is my finished quilt:

Now, I am going to show how I made my storage bag/tote from the leftovers from my Moda Bake Shop quilt!

First, take 10 of your leftover 'tubes' and open them up.  These can be totally random, or however you wish.  You are going to be making two 25-patch blocks from these.

 From either the extra from your backing, or from your filler strips, cut 2 1/2'' strips and frame your blocks.  I chose to do mitered corners because I used the stripe, but you can do regular boxed corners.

Now, cut 3'' strips from some of your other leftovers and frame just 3 sides of each panel.

The unframed edge is going to be the 'top'.
Join the two panels together at the bottom so it looks like this:

Now, treat this as if it was a little quilt - and baste and quilt as desired.  I chose random straight lines on the diagonal.  Trim your quilt up along the edges so you have nice clean lines to work with.

Next, you'll be making the handles.  Take the remaining leftover 'tubes', and open them up.  Join them together into two equal length handles (15 patches each).  Cut two strips from some of your leftover yardage 2 1/2''x 30 1/2'' and two strips 1 1/2'' x width of bag.  Match the scrappy strips up with a 2 1/2'' strip of leftover fabric (I used the panel fabric from my quilt), and with right sides together, sew down each side with a 5/8'' seam allowance.  Yes, 5/8'' seam allowance.  This will give the handle several layers when it's turned right side out so it's nice and sturdy without the use of an interfacing.

turn them right side out and press

stitch along each side of the handles 1/8'' from the edge.  You can also do a decorative stitch on these (I decided to do a flower stitch along the center of my handles) TRIM the ends after stitching to give a nice straight/clean edge.

Now, align one of your handles along one of the top edges of the quilted bag.  I aligned mine with the inside of the handle to line up with the inner seam on the outer blocks in the 25-patch. Pin these with RIGHT SIDES together and raw edges lined up.

Now, take your 1 1/2'' strips and press them in half.  You are going to be making a binding-of-sorts with them for the top of the bag.  Pin this to the top of the bag with raw edges together.  Stitch binding/handles to top of bag with a 3/8'' seam.  Reinforce stitches at handles.

Turn binding toward the back and stitch two seams to hold it in place and to reinforce the handles more.

Unfortunately, this is where I lost a few pics from demons possessing my computer.  For some reason, if I delete pics on my camera with my computer, the computer gets confused and deletes the wrong ones, UGH.
Anyhow, after you have finished the top edge/handles, now is the time to make this into a bag.  I used French seams for my bag.  You can use regular seams and zigzag the edges if you prefer.  I know my old sewing machine wouldn't have handled French seams on this many layers (especially the top edge where the binding is).  So, for French seams, you place WRONG sides together, and stitch a scant 1/4'' seam.  Then, turn so it is RIGHT sides together and stitch a 3/8'' seam.  This encloses the edges and makes a neat seam.
Now, to box the bottom to make the bag stand up on it's own.  This tutorial shows pics (ahem, for which I seem to be missing) on how to box the corners.  Or this one is good too.  I stitched my boxed corners so they are just over 4'' at the stitching line.  I didn't do the French  seams here, but you can if you wish (start with a shorter seam if you plan to do that).

Now turn right side out and you have a perfect quilted bag to go with your quilt!  Great for storage or for taking it along in the car!

 

To fold the quilt to perfectly fit in the back, first fold it into quarters.  Then, fold the longer edge into thirds, then finally fold that in half.  It will fit perfectly into the bag with this folding method!