The Brava Bag

Another project from the archives: 2015 Bag Class edition!

Front of Brava Bag — Front view of the Brava Bag I made in class

Over the years I’ve been steadily working of projects and expanding my skills. I’ve learned so much over time, with the support and instruction of some fantastic teachers at my favorite store, The Presser Foot.

In the last month or so I’ve been looking through the patterns of things I’ve made, and trying to remember when I made them. I made this one in 2015. The Brava Bag pattern was designed by Ruthann Stilwell for Susan Rooney Patterns. (I’ve included an image of the pattern below.) This bag might be the first one I made in which quilting was involved! I did a little free-motion work around some of the design elements on one part of the bag, and on another part I did (mostly) evenly-spaced lines.

The Quilting, the Thread

I’m pretty sure I had never done any type of quilting before making this bag. I can tell you I knew nothing about dropping the feed dogs on my sewing machine (they grab the fabric and propel it forward under the presser foot) for the free-motion part - ha! To change directions with my stitching I just wrestled with the fabric and turned it with the needle down (the needle sunk into the fabric instead of retracted above).

I used a standard machine sewing thread, I think Mettler, on this project. I used a pale blue thread for my free-motion stitches and for assorted topstitching. For the spaced lines I used the presser foot itself as my spacer, and guided the fabric in the curved direction, using black thread. at the time I was super pleased with how this turned out. If I were to do this bag again now with these fabrics, I might choose black thread for the whole thing.

Detail of Brava Bag front - quilting and key fob

You can see here that this bag has several pockets - as I recall, you can pretty much decide for yourself where to stitch down these exterior pockets. I really love key fobs for my purses, and I made sure that this one was long enough to tuck in to one of these front pockets when a set of keys are hooked on.

Some Appliqué!

Brava Bag front inside with appliqué detail

Look! I did some appliqué! The flower shown here inside the front flap is straight from the fabric I used. Usually when I make bags I don’t get all the fabrics from the same collection, but on this bag I’m pretty sure I did. I used the fussy cut technique to pull out this flower, and it looks like I used a tiny zig-zag stitch to both attach and edge it.

The closure on this flap is a magnetic snap. You can see here how I’ve tucked the key fob hook into the little pocket on the front edge.

A Covered Button

Brava Bag back view, with covered button

Here is a view of the back of the Brava Bag. There is a sizeable pocket, intended for a small tablet device, and the closure is a covered button. I believe this was my first covered button! I tried to pattern-match with the flower underneath, and you can see there is also some quilting on the inside layer and on the pocket itself.

The Inside - Some Padded Pockets

Brava Bag inside view — Brava bag inside view

The last photo I have is a view of the inside. Here you can see two padded pockets - I think I might have added to the padding on these, something I like to do to protect my cell phone and sunglasses.

Epilogue

I believe I skipped making the separate little wallet-on-a-strap, or if I did make it, I have lost it and never took any photos. Would I make this bag again? Yes, I might. I would choose a smaller scale pattern for my fabrics, however, and by now I have several more years experience with quilting and I might do something different with that. I’m still rather pleased with my little free-hand zig-zag appliqué stitching, though! I enjoy projects that require me to try new skills, as this bag did, so if you are wanting to practice a few of these techniques, I recommend making this bag!