Another Retreat and a Wee Braw Bag [A Finish]

A promised in my Finish Along Q4 plan post, the wee braw bag is my first finish of the quarter. It was made as a swap for our North East Modern Quilt Guild Retreat, which took place last weekend. We spent the weekend in a beautiful cottage in the Northumberland countryside, sewing and eating cake. The cottage kitchen/diner was perfect for sewing with a big table, space for a few extra tables, a sofa for hand sewing and tonnes of floor space for laying out blocks. And there was a separate living room for Strictly! Everyone was very productive and the projects we were all working on were gorgeous. We won't discuss the spiders at length, suffice to say they were HUUUUUUGE!

Picture stolen from @lupilotty cause I forgot to take any photos of the cottage

But back to the Wee Braw Bag....I was making for Tina, who I know very well, but that didn't make it any easier to pick out fabrics. Until I remembered I had this sugar skulls fabric (it's from Michael Miller, but there was no other information on the bit of the selvage I had left). I teamed it with some solid pale blue, and a bright pink fro Libs Elliot's Mix Tape range, and some black tone on tone for the lining.

I didn't have enough of the feature print to use it for the main body of the bag, so used it as an accent on the front pocket, and then appliqued the scraps onto the reverse with some embroidery stitches in Finca #16 Perle Thread. I even pressed it after I'd taken this photo!

I couldn't believe how smoothly and quickly the bag went together, and the resulting pouch is a really satisfying size, that sits open beautifully. Mega useful!

I added some chocolates and a pretty pair of scissors as the little gist inside - Tina has a bit of a thing for scissors! Sarah @lupilotty made a Wee Braw Bag for me - Alison Glass and hexagons! Perfect. And a Unicorn, which I will not be sharing. And chocolate. Ditto.

And here are all six of the swapped items together - it was amazing how many of us used pink for the casing at the top of the pouch!

The Wee Braw Bag pattern is by Laura Cunningham and comes with two size options. This is the larger option, but I definitely fancy trying out the smaller one soon!

This is a finish from my Finish Along list - you can find that list here.