QuiltCon: The Pre-Conference Pouches

Last week I traveled to Savannah for QuiltCon. My brain still can’t wrap itself around everything I saw and did during the course of the conference, but I can tell you it was awesome—like, one-of-the-best-weeks-of-my-life awesome.

I went for the classes (I took two) and the lectures (I took three). I went for the show and the shopping. It was the people who made the conference what it was, though. Being around all those creative quilters, talking about quilting from sunup to sundown, was both inspiring and exhausting!

I can’t summarize all that was QuiltCon in one blog post, so I thought I’d break it into a few posts about different aspects of the experience. First up is the pre-conference sewing I did ...

I wanted to make a little something for friends I’d be seeing in Savannah. I knew I couldn’t make a present for everyone I would hang out with, so I settled on making a gift for two in-real-life friends and for two social-media friends I’d be meeting for the first time at the event.

I sewed some of Ellen Luckett Baker’s Pixel Pouches, from her book 1-2-3 Quilt. I started one of these pouches a years ago, but assembling the 54 1½-inch squares—of nearly 2 dozen different fabrics!—was more than my scrap bin could handle. A few years later, my scrap bin is overflowing. Once I considered using a color scheme and layout different from what Ellen uses, these pouches came together quickly.

This is the Pixel Pouch from Ellen Luckett Baker’s 1-2-3 Quilt.

For the first one, I used scraps from this quilt. The beauty of this approach was I already knew that these fabrics worked well together.

The back features an extra block from this quilt, which was recently quilted and just needs to be bound. (Stay tuned for that finish in the next few weeks!)

For the remaining pouches, I broke into a Basic Grey Fresh Cut charm pack and sewed three pouches in slightly different color palettes. 

The only snafu I encountered while creating these pretty pouches was zipper related. (Isn’t it always?!) I zipped two of the pull rights off the trimmed tape. It took more than a little coaxing to get them back where they belonged. My perseverance paid off, however, and the recipients were thrilled to receive a pouch with a zipper intact and functional. Ha!

I have made my fair share of pouches, but truth be told, I prefer bag making to pouch making. Size matters, and smaller often means harder and more fiddly!

Do you have a go-to pouch pattern or tutorial? Once I make a bag or pouch pattern, I usually sew it up again and again. Check out some well-worn patterns and tutorials I have used here.

Linking up to Let’s Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday, Finish It Up Friday, and Scraptastic Tuesday ...