Quilter's Ruler & Mat Bag

Patchwork Retreat Day 3

When all the ladies arrived for the retreat on the Monday, most of them arrived with a wonderful quilter's accessory bag.  A large bag which holds a large cutting mat and a variety of different sized rulers along with a smaller pocket for your cutting tools.  They are really handy but I couldn't find a pattern anywhere.   One of the ladies let me do a lot of measuring up along with photographs.

The original pattern I believe belongs to a lady called Barbara Slee - I hear quite a lot of this lady and she sounds very talented and has done some amazing work, thank you Barbara and I hope I have done your design justice.  (I was awarded 7 out of 10 by the lady whose bag I borrowed, quilters are hard critics lol).

I bought a jelly roll - 22.00

1 metre of the brown stripe - 7.00

1 metre of the cream floral background 7.00

4 metres of the cream/pink floral bird background 28.00

1 pack of cover buttons 29mm

1 pack of cover buttons 22mm

1/2 metre of firm bag interfacing for pockets 5.00

Aurifil thread 8.35

Four rectangles larger than your cutting mat size by one inch all the way round.  Wadding is sandwiched between the layers and I quilted them one inch squares on one side and 1.5 inch on the other side.  The top of each side has binding on it.

The large pocket is 14 inches square and sandwiched with the firm bag stabiliser to give a neat finish to the quilting and to give support to the bag.  The smaller pocket is big enough to hold smaller square rulers, papers, patterns or your cutter and spare blades.

The back pocket is 24.5 x 6.5 inches and quilted and is also sandwiched with the firm bag stabiliser.

All of the pockets have machine binding and a tab with buttonhole to fasten the button at the top of the pockets.

The handles are 30 inches long and stitched with four rows of straight stitch.  I decided not to interface them as the stitching gave them support.  Each handle is stitched to the top of the bag by folding them back on each other and then a covered button is added to each handle at the top of the bag.  The whole bag is then machine bound at the sides and the bottom.

Thanks for reading, come back tomorrow to see Thursday's work :)