Deadlines are highly overrated

… Because stuff happens when it happens. I had to finish my “retirement bag” early. What was going to be a Christmas present to a co-worker became a retirement present when she announced last month that she would be retiring at the end of April. Okay, no problem. Six weeks to figure out how to make a bag. Then last week, retirement date suddenly got moved up to this past Tuesday.

Good thing I’d made a couple of practice bags because, at least I had a “clue”. I didn’t have time to figure out the zipper or the flap. My pockets didn’t turn out quite the way I wanted them to. But I remembered to pay attention to the direction of my material (up and down or side to side?), and I didn’t put any pockets on the bottom of the bag this time – so I’m learning. I began work on it Monday night and finished up around 3:30 am on Tuesday, her last day of work. I can’t even describe how many times I changed my decision on what fabric to use, or how certain features stumped me, or how many times I had to pull out my stitches. But I got it done, and the finished bag didn’t look too bad. It wasn’t as fancy as I wanted to make it, but it turned out all right.

My choice of fabrics was a surprise to me because they weren’t the ones that I was going to use. In fact, I cut some other fabric to use, but ended up using these – that I bought from the thrift store. in the end, they just suited her more than the first ones I’d chosen. Again, I used the Crab Bay Project tote at the Blank Quilting site (on page 8), but I made it horizontal this time instead of vertical, and it looked much better. Now that that’s out of the way, I can go back to working on zippers and flaps.

But one day soon I have to get back to my Mexican Star quilt – it’s so close to being done. Just another bag or two…

Until next time,