Ka(t)waii Bag

Remembering, as I am sure you have, that "kawaii!" means "cute" in japanese, the title of this post will make perfect sense. I have made a cat bag.

The features are needle-turn applique'd apart from the whiskers which were simple embroidery. On the back is a bow - because most cute things in Tokyo feature bows somewhere along the way.

The bag is a kit I got at the Quilt Show some months ago and my finally getting on with it was brought about by my previous cross-body bag suddenly breaking mid-jaunt a week or two ago. There is no doubting this one is cross-body when you see the length of the strap.

Which itself is a paw at one end, albeit rather sketchily embroidered.

The fabric is one of the lovely japanese woven ones with a polka dot texture (dots and cats - the kit was basically designed for me). In the pattern and instructions that came with it the bag was supposed to be a little bit smaller with an 8" zip closure. I've enlarged mine and given it just a magnetic clasp.

I also added an inner pocket for my travelcard using one of the sample squares I picked up still on the card at Okidaya.

The original design didn't have any lining but I've added this japanese lilac kitten and temari ball print I picked out of a bargain bucket somewhere this year. I've yet to give the bag a testdrive but I am rather smitten with it already! It is finished in time for the start of Spring which has begun here with some really lovely weather. 16, 18 even 20 degrees so that I sat here at lunchtime with the balcony door open.

From next week I will be able to sit out on the balcony in my red polka dot garden chair Pooch inadvertantly got me as a present. I say 'inadvertantly' since he has been in bed with the mother of all hangovers all day and to make up for the smell and the rest of it I told him he'd got me the chair in one of his lucid moments just as I arrived at the bedside with another cup of tea. He bravely muttered that there was no need to thank him.

While my Mum was visiting I got her to pick out some fabrics for a quilt and have since been going strong on an EPP quilt I have designed for her.

The sides are all 2" and so I calculate I need 90 blue hexagons, 86 whitish ones, 558 blue diamonds and 135 whitish of the same. So far I have 78, 12, 180 and 64 respectively. I have more fabric waiting for me for when I get back to the UK for a visit in three weeks, but this leaves me with a dilemma. Should I start sewing together the shapes or should I wait so I can fully integrate the new fabrics into all parts of the quilt? If I wait I need to keep cutting more and more paper pieces, whereas if I get on with it I can reuse existing ones but risk a patchy quilt. That basically answers it really - I'll have to wait. Having so many shapes left me in a storage quandry until I found these at the 100 yen shop.

Diamonds in the top and hexagons plus uncut fabric in the bottom. I'll need to swap those before long though. Mum asked for the quilt to be in blues so there are quite a few shades appearing already.

I am sure there will be many more added before I see this one off the needle though!