The Puppy Love Tote Bag

Let's see if we can post this before the granddaughters arrive and completely disrupt my train of thought!

I meant to take the camera with me to the meeting Thursday so I could get shots of everyone's tote bags for you to see. I even put the camera bag with my tote and purse. Maybe because the camera bag is black so I didn't see it, maybe for some other reason entirely, I walked off without it. {sigh} The only bag you'll get to see is mine. Which is sort of a shame because no two bags were alike, even in size. So what you see here is in no way representative of what the other ladies produced. (At least one bag was painted, and the challenge fabric used as an appliqued shape. One artist attempted needlefelting her bag but ended up covering it up with the challenge print and another piece of fabric for a pocket. She added a sprinkling of sequins to the pocket and got a bag that was very clean and contemporary looking. We also had a bag with a pocket trimmed in red rickrack. Her color scheme was sort of black and white, lime green, and red. Very striking.)

I'm just going to show you a full view of one side of the bag but then give you close-up shots all the way around the bag:


It turned out to be a very "Elle Woods" kind of tote (from the "Legally Blonde" movies). My original intention was to use one or more of my Halloween/skeleton prints. Turns out the challenge fabric (which you can see in this post) has a blue base rather than a black base. It didn't look good with any of my skeleton prints. I have quite a pile of doggy prints so that's where I looked next for inspiration. I found this fat eighth that seemed to work, and off I went! Once I have a focal fabric I pull other colors/prints that I like with it. I generally pull more than I end up using but I like having choices.

The other artists used the challenge fabric more prominently than I did but hey, I used it! I just covered it up with appliques and sequins and things!

I love the ball fringe! And the pink check ribbon was a serendipitous find. I thought I was going to use some pink rickrack on this but it didn't need it in the end.

This is a tote I will use so there were a few other embellishments I decided against using because of their fragility. I was concerned about getting all the parts back together (I had removed the original handles to make longer ones) but even that process went smoothly. I don't think I could be more pleased with this project. {whew!} How nice to be able to say that!