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Last week, while my husband was away on business, I ventured of the quilting path and into the world of bag making.

A few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of the Miranda Day Bag pattern by Lazy Girl Designs. I also gathered up the required yardages and other materials that day. It became a matter of having both the motivation and the time to create the bag.

I was very pleased with the written instructions and the diagrams in this pattern, and I would totally recommend it to anyone who is intimidated by the idea of making a bag. (I like it so much that I’m making at least two more.) The final product is just the right size for toting around a knitting project.

Check out the photos of my first Miranda bag, which I’ve made for my friend Jess:

The finished bag

Zoom of fabrics

View inside the bag

Total work time: 9 hours

I am not a trendy person. I never have been and probably never will be. I saw these “jelly roll” and “charm pack” things at a quilt show a couple of years ago, kind of scoffed to myself, and carried on. (A jelly roll is a collection of forty or so 2.5″ strips, stacked up and rolled up. The resulting flat spiral looks somewhat like a jelly roll pastry. A charm pack is a collection of forty 5″ squares. Moda offers jelly rolls and charm packs for many of their fabric collections.) I figured that, given the size of my stash, I would be able to whip up a bunch of 2.5″ strips or 5″ squares. I suppose that idea was good in theory, but I haven’t had the time or inclination to follow through on it.

Recently, I found a fun and easy pattern designed just for two charm packs and one jelly roll. Right now, it is the only quilt pattern available from French Fantasy Designs, and it’s called “1 Jelly Roll, 2 Charm Packs…”.

So far, I have started one top (blocks are done and the setting triangles are cut, but the top is not assembled), and purchased fabric for a second interpretation of this pattern. It should be pretty clear that I like the end result of this pattern. Of course, that doesn’t keep me from having some opinions about it…

• I had some difficulty with this pattern at first because I’m really not much of a scrap quilter. Truth be told, I tend to feel upset and/or stressed if I work on a quilt that has dozens of different fabrics in it. (The end result is usually too chaotic for my taste.) The layout of the blocks is similar to other quilts I’ve made, though, so I decided to give this pattern a try.
• The instructions themselves are pretty well done. I was pleasantly surprised to find information for cutting your own fabric as a substitute for using the jelly roll and charm packs. Later, I discovered that this information (sans cutting instructions) appears on the pattern’s back cover. So much for RTFM!
• The cutting instructions themselves are presented in text only. Given how visual an activity that quilting is, I am surprised that there were not also diagrams.
• The assembly instructions are also presented only as text. Even though I am a good reader, I like to have pictures included with the written instructions, especially for pressing and assembly. (In the end, the pressing of the blocks’ seams did not matter, as long as the orientation of the blocks in the assembled top alternated between a vertical orientation and a horizontal orientation.)

If I were to do it all over again, knowing the above items ahead of time, would I still buy the pattern? Possibly. Not long before finding, purchasing, and using this pattern, I created a similar pattern on my own. It’s not a stretch to think that, if I were sitting around and wondering how to use jelly rolls and charm packs, that I would have eventually determined the measurements provided in the pattern. However, I do recommend the pattern for beginning quilters and for quilters who are not prone to designing their own patterns.

(Note that I am not in any way associated with French Fantasy Designs or any other company or individual who creates, designs, or publishes quilt patterns. I’m just an opinionated quilter.)