spooky improv tote

I made this bag on a whim on Sunday afternoon and I just love it. It started with sitting down to clean up my scrappy mess which obviously did not happen. Instead I decided I would do more improvisational sewing. I had the half square triangle blocks already made as "offcuts" from the Halloween quilt I made, so I just sewed them up into a pinwheel figuring I'd find a way to use it someday. After that, I sorted out all the little leftover pieces from making pumpkin coasters and figured I could improv piece them into another block for fun. I challenged myself to use up as many of the smaller pieces as I could, and I did end up using every last one. Ha! 

The bag form ended up coming from Pinterest photo inspiration. I was perusing my saved sewing finds and that led me to a pattern for a quilted tote that I loosely used for inspiration (and gut checking approximate size) when I realized I had enough of that crow print to make it happen. Why not? I did not measure anything, I just went with what seemed to look ok and then worked in parallel on each side to make sure they were approximately the same in terms of the pieced block placement. I don't know that I'd be able to repeat the effort with results quite as good!

I quilted the panels using scrap batting and orange thread. I found an orange print for the lining that I didn't quite have enough, so I added a couple pieces of the crows to make it work. The candy stripe straps were a relatively recent amazon purchase - it's a set of like 8 or 12 colors of nice quality webbing and it's way more fun to use than making quilted straps. Those have their place, for sure, but this is one less step or two to get to awesome straps. The bag ended up being just the right size for my work computer in an old laptop case I made forever ago which pleases me to no end. Sometimes I wonder what on Earth am I going to do with more bags. Well, if they have this much personality, why not use it to cheer up the commute. 

I am really proud of myself for being able to improvise my way through the construction. I felt especially accomplished having little things in stash that made it easy to add in some interesting touches like the contrast quilting and the stripey straps. And I used fabric I've had for a while, no purchase necessary. I'm glad to see those crows put to use where you can really appreciate the negative space and the quirk of the geometric details in the print. This one feels really good! I have already used it for work and I can confirm it is a perfect tote for the purpose.