Quilted Purses

I mentioned some time ago that I was working on quilted purses for my nieces. I finished them, and they were given as gifts late last year. I have a picture of one to show you. My niece has always been interested in frogs and things of that sort. I found an incredible fabric that had chameleons or newts on it, and bought it even though I didn't have a project in mind.

I found a pamphlet with instructions for quilted totes, duffel bags, purses, and accessories, and figured that would be great for quick gifts. Unfortunately, what I didn't stop to think about was that I was going to have to quilt the fabric, rather than using a pre-quilted fabric. Of course, I did it by machine, but it took me days to get it right. I needed to work out tension and the needle size to get my very ancient machine to cooperate. I ripped out a lot of stitches and re-did them, until I got them right. And having said that, the job was still that of a novice at machine quilting.

This is a picture of the bag I did for my frog-loving, artistic niece:

I did a similar purse for her older sister which was in red and black with gold Japanese calligraphy. She is very into anime (or was....I hope she still is), so that's what helped me to design her purse. I may have a picture of her purse to share one day.