We were allowed to choose our pattern and the fabric line we wanted to use back in the summer before our boxes arrived for the second half of the year. Here is my packet as it arrived in my box. It contained everything I needed to make this bag.

The pattern I chose is the Round Trip Duffle. When we travel, we like to take our single cup coffee maker with us and I thought this would be the PERFECT bag in which to carry it!

I chose my fabrics from the Bee Kind collection. I just love everything about this line of fabrics. Besides the gorgeous colors, it has bees, hummingbirds, and “honeycombs” included.

The first thing I did was read through all twelve pages of instructions. If you don’t do this with your patterns, I highly recommend it as I have not always done so and have regretted my choice! LOL I love the fact that the pattern is a checklist! You just check off each item as you complete the instructions given.

After reading through the pattern, I started with the cutting instructions. Following the very helpful lay out diagrams, all pieces were cut, including the ByAnnie Soft and Stable. NOTE: The instructions gave the option of doing all the quilting at one time before cutting, or quilting the individual pieces. I chose to quilt the individual pieces after cutting them, but in hindsight, I believe I would rather have quilted the entire piece prior to cutting. It worked fine this way, but I think it would have saved a good bit of time! Plus, my quilting on my domestic machine got a little wonky! LOL I used a lime Aurifil for the quilting, and pieced it together with a purple Aurifil! Love my Aurifil threads!!

Here are all the pieces cut and ready to quilt and make a bag!! I love that the pattern provided labels you can print off and attach to the fabric in order to know exactly what each piece is and where it is used. . Fellow ambassador Jennifer, of Curliecue Creations, had a great idea to print them off on light weight sticker paper. It would have saved me a lot of pinning had I done that!! At any rate, it was done and the pins worked fine…this time!!

After quilting the larger pieces, they were cut into bag parts, the edges sealed, and set aside. There is a lot of prep work involved, but it is so worth it so when you get to the part of putting it all together, it goes really quickly! Part of the prep work included making straps and rounding the corners of the front and back. I used one of my longarm quilting circle rulers for this!

After all the prep was completed, including making the outside pockets and inside divided and mesh pockets it was time to put it all together. Clips are wonderful to hold everything in place, and they slip away easily as you sew up to them.

And here is my Round Trip Duffle Bag! Because of the green in the bag, I staged it on top of my Mustang, and she’s ready to roll! But she does like that tree pose also! LOL

Bag Stats:
Size:  12″ high x 19-1/2″ wide x 7-1/2″ Deep
Pattern: Round Trip Duffle ByAnnie.com
Fabric: Bee Kind collection by Island Batik
Thread: Aurifil
Needles: Schmetz Chrome Professional 90/100

I enjoyed making this bag so much. I love all the pockets on the inside and outside. And yes, I made zipper pulls, but forgot to add them before taking the pictures! The bag has a solid bottom (clear acrylic stabilizer) that was supplied in the package also, with a sleeve made for it using the green accent fabric. I also love that it has both handles and an adjustable carrying strap. This bag has it all!! If you’ve never made one of Annie’s bags, I highly recommend them. Annie’s instructions are awesome. This bag pattern included an add-on video and if you purchase a pattern that has that option, I recommend getting it. There are awesome videos on general bag construction, but this add-on video helped so much with putting everything together. I took advantage of all the videos as it’s been a while since I added a zipper to a bag!

Many thanks go to Island Batik for this fun challenge and the beautiful fabric they provided me to use. I also thank ByAnnie, an Island Batik industry partner, for supplying the pattern, video, Soft and Stable, zippers, mesh, and hardware to make this bag. In making the bag, I also used Aurifil thread and a 90/100 Chrome Professional Schmetz needle. Thank you, Aurifil and Schmetz, along with Prairie Spirit Alpaca for the wool pressing mat!

All the Island Batik Ambassadors are making ByAnnie.com bags this month!  Visit their blogs throughout October to see what they made.  Here’s a list:

Have a great weekend and awesome week ahead! Until next time…