My entry for the 11.6 – Vibrant and Vivacious – Challenge 6 of Project QUILTING Season 11.

I am sad that just as our shelter in place is ramping up… this challenge is winding down. So hopefully we all go out with a bang! and.. I am sure that I will find new challenges to keep me busy.

For this challenge I have made a Market Tote. So far I have made 4 of these bags. Each one is big enough to hold 12 ROLLS OF TOILET PAPER!! and sturdy enough to carry a dozen canned goods. (Both important features in this pandemic world) But this blue one was specially designed for this challenge using a bunch of my beautiful blue batik scraps.

In last year’s UFO challenge, I figured out that making my unfinished mini fabric collage quilts into bags was a super good way to finish off there quilts.  And… I am currently taking a 12 week online Free Motion Class with String and Story so I have a lot of little practice fabric pieces starting to clutter up my studio. With these two projects in mind,  I decided to use my free motion quilting practice squares to make some market totes. It is also #sewthescrapoutofmarch… so I have been trying to use up a bunch of scrap, after all with shelter in place I need to make do with what is in the house.

Luckily I had bought a pattern (Sew many Creations Market Tote) at Quilting Mayhem pre-isolation and was ready to use it.

I then decided… as everyone was panic buying out the stores and our school was figuring out how best to still feed the 70% of our students that are on the federal food program.. that donating to my local food bank would be a good idea. I am SO lucky to be able to work from home and still get paid and have a healthy savings to weather this world wide storm. So it is important that people in my privileged position give back in any way that we can! So I am selling each of these bags for a donation to my local food bank (less a small shipping fee). Before I have even finished this post I already have 2 sold. And I am completely out of quilting practice squares. Next up… making more squares by using up more scraps and orphan blocks.

Close ups of “vibrant” blue bag quilting.