travel pouch

I needed a quick gift for one of the barn folks I work with, and the advantage of having a rather robust stash and some sewing skills is that I could make one in an evening! I've have been wanting to make some zippered pouches lately, probably because I got going on those drawstring bags which were so satisfying to make. A little bit of scrap diving came up with the lovely patchwork below.

I had a lot of approximately 2 inch strips of Indie fabric that I sewed into strip sets. To make the patchwork I just cut the strip sets into strips 90 degrees from the stripe to give me tubes of squares. I ripped the seams of the tubes in different places to give me strips of squares that I could just sew together with a few seams to give me the patchwork. I like the ikat print across the bottom to ground it a bit, and I used the same print as the bag lining. 

For the back I kept the strips intact instead of making the patchwork - I like the difference a lot and it is a nice way to see more of the print intact. Each of the outer pieces were sewn onto scraps of quilt batting with straight lines 1/4" away from the seams using a contrasting thread, navy I think. 

Assembling it was a little bit of a pain mostly because I don't think I left myself enough room to maneuver around the ends of the zipper. I definitely broke a needle sewing over a piece I thought I had cleared! Oops. At least it was an old needle. The zipper is a light blue one I had hanging around and while it doesn't match any of the colors in the prints I like the way it works with them.

All in all this was a fun quick gift to make and I hope the person getting it uses it in her travels to shows and clinics.