Red Letter Quilts: Spontaneous – An Off Season Project QUILTING Challenge. My Patchwork Duffel Bag...

Christmas Leftovers!

Named for the leftover Christmas scraps I used to make it, but also as I intend to use this bag to store holiday items that do not make it to storage before the boxes are stored away. Over-looked decorations and ornaments that seem to appear throughout the year...

New to Project Quilting Challenge this year, I had no idea Kim would continue to challenge us during 'off season'! When the Spontaneity challenge came through my inbox, I thought I'd better pass and focus on current projects. It was a week or so later I had pulled out my Christmas stash when found a little paper bag.

Hmm, what have we here? and like a can of worms, I opened it...

Some pretty little leftovers, and a 25 year old orphan block. How endearing.
Do I really need to save everything?
Yes!
Hmm, I thought,
If I were to make something with this block, it would be spontaneous!
And nostalgic as well! I made Christmas Sampler blocks when I was first learning patchwork. I drew some of them and made templates, and some were more improvisational. Just last year I set the blocks, and I am hoping to get this quilted by Christmas this year.

Anyway, it did not take me long to figure out why this little tree block I found had been set aside from the others - it has no seam allowance for the tree top! Although I still can't part with it, I was already distracted by the other goodies in the bag and began sewing together simple patches. I made a sandwich and Big-Stitched it with DMC 8, then I added the gold X's and began figuring some dimensions for a duffel.
I took a lot of pics with a tutorial in mind, but for now they are shared here as a collage.

I added a strip to the bottom of the sandwich, flip&stitch style, and basted two strips to the top edge for the casing. I used string to determine the oval, base-shape.

The lining fit just right!

I struggled with how to finish the ends of the cording. In the end, I cut the tassels from pillow trimming and wrapped the ends with floss. Not the best solution, but it worked ;-)

Today is the deadline to linkup for the Spontaneous Challenge at Persimmon Dreams.
As well for Ho Ho Ho and on We Sew - the link party is hosted at SLIK stitches this month.