It's in the Bag!

I had an unexpected "free day" today (yippee!), so I kept working on the game board case for my sister's school project. It's basically a quilted envelope style bag large enough to fit a game board she's designed that measures 12" x 18" folded. She also needed 14 pockets inside for the stacks of game cards, which are the size of a business card, one large pocket for her instruction book and a pocket to fit a kitchen timer used in the "lightning round" part of the game. (It's really a fun learning game for medical-type stuff. I hope to show you the whole thing when she's done, before she hands it in for her class at the end of July.)

I used stash/scrap fabric throughout, all Lantern Bloom by Laura Gunn, except the brown with the black swirls. No clue where I got that one, but I sure had a lot of it!

Here is the outside, pin-basted to the batting. I ditch-quilted the inner design and then straight-line quilted the rest of the bag, mostly vertical lines but some horizontally in the flap.

I drew the rows of pockets out on graph paper to make sure they'd all fit. Here they are sewn onto one of the inner lining pieces. Since I didn't have a pattern for this bag, just the dimensions of the board and the other elements she needed, I made it up as I went along, making sure to measure, measure, and measure some more. I found the design-as-you-go process pretty enjoyable, actually. Those purple things in the pockets are just cardstock cut to business card size so I could double check the fit.

For the kitchen timer pocket, I played around with folding the paper to make side gussets, because the timer is kind of thick. Then I translated that to fabric. It worked!

The most difficult thing was figuring out how to sew the lining to the bag so that when turned right side out, it would fold down inside the bag and the pockets would be going the right direction, etc. I actually had to make a mock-up on a small scale with some scraps and play around with that. I swear I used to be better at grasping spatial concepts with just a mental picture or glancing at a diagram, but now? Not so much. I haven't made any lined bags recently, so I felt like a total newb.

The moment of truth: Turning the bag...*drum roll*...*cymbal crash*. Yes!

Front with flap open:

Back:

Inside:

So there it is! My sister was elated to see it this evening, and the stuff fit inside great! Now I just have to make a drawstring bag and another small pouch for the little game pieces--no big deal.

Now let's see what everyone else is up to on Sew & Tell Friday at amylouwho!