Weekender Bag Sew Along : Week Two (Pocket Piecing)

Hey there friends!  I promise I've done some sewing since my last post ... maybe not as much as I had hoped, but I was on vacation.  :-) 

I usually sew on a Bernina 710, but took my smaller 210 to the Outer Banks with me and enjoyed sewing with the ocean and sand dunes, and the occasional wild pony, in the background.  Relaxing and a fun week away.  

If you follow me on Instagram (@sewlux), you've seen these photos, but I wanted to walk you through a little more of my pocket piecing process.

You may have also seen that Sew & Sew by Chloe's Closet arrived right before I left for the beach and I changed my mind about my fabric choices...  I mean, they are just so pretty!

I knew I wanted to put an initial on one end of the pocket.  I decided it would be super cute to put it inside a spool ... I used the Spell It With Moda letter as my inspiration and scaled it down... way down.  The letter finished at 1.5" wide x 2.5" tall.  I made the Mini Spool from Thimble Blossoms a little taller to accommodate that but otherwise followed Camille's directions.  I think it's really cute if I do say so myself! ;-)

My next end pocket is the cute little flower from Handmade - also a mini pattern by Camille. I fussy cut a bunch of flowers from this print as the center.  And can we talk about these measuring tape prints?!  I plan to add some borders to this one and to make it large enough.

Since I was traveling and wasn't sure what kind of iron and ironing board might be available at the beach house, I invested in a cute little travel iron and ironing mat that I got off of Amazon.  While small, this iron definitely did the job and got super hot.  I didn't use steam, but it was hot enough to press my seams nice and flat.  (Side note: after reading some reviews about these ironing mats/pads, I brought along a little tv tray table and used it as my ironing surface just in case ... and that way I didn't risk ruining the dining table at the house.)

I decided to piece some of the small Smitten blocks for both of my larger pockets.  I machine piece these and use the Marti Michell templates to cut and mark my fabrics. 

I used a paper grocery bag to make a template of the pocket size and then the MM templates to mark the layout to figure out how many blocks I would need to make.  And then I had a great time playing around with fabrics ...

Can all the blocks be my favorite? I don't think I can choose just one... ;-)

I think this bag is going to be totally dreamy with these colors and florals mixed up.  To make the pocket panel big enough, I added some partial unpieced hexagons (using the largest whole hexagon template in the set to cut them) along the top and sides.  Since the bottom of the hexagons on the second row will be cut off some, I kept all the most intricately pieced blocks along the top row where they could be seen.

I will be quilting up my pockets and other panel pieces this weekend ... I will post an update in a few days!

Happy Sewing! :-)