Ultimate Travel Bag 2.0

Susan
Oct 28
2 min read

October is always a fun month, because it is the By-Annie challenge month. This time, I decided to go big, as in the Ultimate Travel Bag 2.0. I chose three fabrics from the Lumin Fabrics Studio 180 Design (Deb Tucker) Sunset collection (Burst Pink Bubblegum, Crosshatched Orange Tiger and Squiggle Purple Blurple). I think I made a great choice!

The first step is to quilt your fabrics with the By-Annie Soft & Stable. The pattern gives you directions to quilt the three pieces either individually or as one larger piece. I used Aurifil 50 weight thread for the quilting and piecing of my bag (1128, 4660, 4020, 4658).

The pattern gives you directions regarding general quilting and binding instructions, working with mesh, fold-over elastic and rounding the corners. After you have quilted your fabric(s), you will cut them according to the sizes stated in the pattern. Next, let's get those zippers ready! Then we will prepare our bias binding, fuse any interfacing to fabrics and prepare our zipper pulls. We then go on to work on our straps and handles. By-Annie patterns have you get all of the components ready individually and then you get to put them all together! This pattern also has an add-on video tutorial.

We have a few more things that we need to get ready: the pockets, side strip, zipper strips, the front and the back pieces.

At about this point, I felt a surge of confidence and excitement. I can do this and I am going to have a beautiful bag! I was getting so close to having a finished bag. I was ready to start putting the prepared pieces together, but I needed to round my corners. This was not difficult to do. I used the By-Annie Stiletto and Pressing Tool when I was sewing the bag pieces together and it was a great help. Schmetz needles and my Oliso mini iron were also used.