FMQ Practice Turned Into a Bag

I decided I wanted to make a bag that calls for pre-quilted fabric. Since I wanted to practice my FMQ, I decided why not make my own pre-quilted fabric. I purchased Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters last year and absolutely love this book! So easy to understand and you can just pick it up and try out a design.

I decided to try out the basic swirl shown here:

So I drew out the design in a scribbler and filled the whole page. Then I prepped a practice sandwich. And finally prepped the fabric that I selected to make the bags....alright I will admit, I was starting to feel terrified at this moment. What about if I messed up and ruined the beautiful fabric that I picked out?! Deep breaths was my mantra at this moment. So I worked up the courage to finally start....then I couldn't stop....So I finished the full piece and was quite happy with myself. Sure there's mistakes and I had the top thread break on me a few times! But in the end, I was happy and proud of what I accomplished.

 Outer Piece of the bag

 Inner Piece of the bag

I started to relax about half way through and just worked my way through it. I paused a few times to make sure I didn't sew myself into a corner. If you haven't tried FMQ yet, I definitely recommend trying this design out. And you should definitely check out Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters. And remember to breathe!

Close-Up

Then came cutting out pattern pieces for the bag....I almost didn't want to cut the fabric....crazy I know. But I just wanted to run my hand over the quilting for a while......I ended up having enough to cut out a medium and large bag.

Love those Swirls!

Here's one bag all finished :)

The only problem I had was trying to get that 1/4" bias to cooperate! I had to seam rip a few times...but I'm still happy with the end result. Now to attempt Bag #2....