Playful Totes

At the last meeting of Quilts for Kids that I attended I picked up five kits to make totes.  You see a stack of six here because I had some fabric and made some kits, too.  On Sunday, I sat down and really got to work on some of these.  The directions can be found on the Annapolis Quilts for Kids site.

I really only deviated from the directions a little bit.  I added a piece of batting cut to 3/4" wide to the strap to buff it up a little.  I just didn't like how flimsy it seemed without the batting.

I also left an opening in the side seam of the lining so I could stitch around the entire top of the bag and really catch the handles in the seam before turning and top-stitching.  Here, you can see I"ve pinned them together around the top.

Here are the four I finished today.  I sewed them in pairs, so I could do a little bit of assembly-line sewing.  I still created quilting that fit each bag so no two are quilted the same.

This one is my favorite of the bunch.  I tried to replicate the sea grass lines in the quilting for the upper portion and just used a simple meander for the base.  Love these colors!

I finished up these two bags during the week.  So I'll just slip the picture in here.

I still have six more kits.  I don't know that I'll get to all of them this week, but I do need to keep at it since they're due by November 16th.  These totes are used by the Nursing Student Association at Children's Hospital in Washington, D.C.  They "fill the bags with goodies based on age, and gender.  [They] really love doing this activity and the kids at Children's Hospital are very appreciative."