It's time for Island Batik Ambassador's Blog Hop and this time we partnered up with ByAnnie!

"The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik"

#islandbatik #thebestfrombali #islandbatikambassador #iloveislandbatik #batik #byannie #patternsbyannie #itsinthebag #bag #bags #garments #sewing #sewinggarments #aurifil #aurifilthread #accessories #itsacinch #pellon #pfaff #pfaffcreativeicon #pfaffidt #cinchsacks #clover #wonderclips #giveaway #bloghop

This month our Blog Hop is all about bags! Each Island Batik Ambassador had the opportunity to choose one of the wonderful ByAnnie patterns to show case a brand new Island Batik Collection! First a special thanks to the ByAnnie's team for sending the patterns and also all the necessary hardware for each of our projects!

Let's talk about the fabric collection for this project! Remember in July, that surprise package very well wrapped on the Ambassador's unboxing video? THAT'S IT!!! Time for the reveal: Nouveau Soul collection designed by Kathy Engle and shipping in October to your local quilt shop! (so now you know exactly what to order there!)

And now some tips to sew mesh fabric! Mesh fabric can be stretchy so take an extra care to keep it flat while sewing and don't pull, otherwise the fabric will be deformed. Always stitch the mesh fabric on top and the cotton fabric on bottom, or keep the mesh fabric between two layers of cotton fabric. (you don't want your sewing machine's feed dogs to get stuck on the mesh fabric). If your machine has a dual feed, like the IDT on my Pfaff Creative Icon in the images below, now is the perfect time to use it and make sure the machine is feeding both layers of the fabric at same time without slipping. Wonder clips are also pretty handy when working with mesh fabric!

Another very important thing to consider when sewing with mesh fabric is to always coordinate the thread color with the fabric color, because the stitches WILL show up. For this project I was using Aurifil 50wt in colors 1135, 1148, 2545 and 2810 and they match perfectly as you can see on the image below:

In all three different sizes of the pattern, you will find a fabric strap in the middle (the inset A) and it is the perfect place to personalize your project. You could embroidery designs, monogram or your children's/grandchildren's names, or just play with piecing layouts like I did! The first image is from the small bag and I decided to make some "rotary cutter curved piecing art", just cut different sizes of fabric straps in a curved way and pieced it together. The second image is the medium bag and I chose to cut the fabric in a fussy way, preserving the most interesting parts of each fabric design. The third image is the large bag and I decided to use straps of fabric but two different colors of mesh fabric, yellow for the bottom and turquoise for the top.

This was a really fun project, the pattern is plenty of explanations, detailed images and also has an Add-On video for even more pattern support.

We are currently using our cinch bags in our boat and no kidding, I could even store the fenders on the large one! You can see part of the crew on the second image helping provide a "human scale" of the bag size ;)

And last but not least... Don't forget to enter this week's giveaway, just click on the image below to get there!

And also my GIVEAWAY on Instagram (also click the image to get there), only US, rules on my post there, closes on Thursday 08.24 at 10pm NYC time! Good luck and come play with me :)