Repurposing Fabric, Part 1

More "gifted" fabric has arrived, and has been sorted, assigned, gifted or tossed. In progress are cosmetic bags for my American Sewing Guild's December charity project. I started with a simple pattern from Better Homes and Garden that uses two rectangles for easy zipper sewing. The pieces are being layered with a pants-weight plaid fabric that has lines for easy quilting. By itself, I didn't find this fabric attractive, but it's working out great as a lining.

The lining is cut to the finished size, and the outside fabric 1" larger. The thin lines make a good scale grid for quilting. On my test sample, after folding the outside fabric in and zig-zag stitching, I realized that I'll need to trim the folded edge to about 1/4" all around before folding, so the finished edges will be hidden in the seams (except along the zipper edge.) Taking good notes on projects helps me step right back in after taking a break from them.

Some of the donated fabric was in strips about 6" wide, and I needed larger pieces, so they were seamed. My hat basket of ribbon pieces had this fun polka-dot ribbon that covers the seam. It was added after quilting the layers.

Five bags with this floral bag are in progress.