show and tell bag in Emma & Myrtle fabric

My new fabric line, Emma & Myrtle, (available exclusively at Connecting Threads) has been out for a several weeks, so I suppose now would be a good time to share a little bit more about it!

The collection was named after two of my great aunts: Emma and Myrtle. Emma was my grandpa's sister, and Myrtle was my grandpa's sister-in-law. Their names should give you an idea of the era in which they lived. :) Originally, I wanted to design a line of fabric based on my memories of them, but the collection evolved into more of a nod to things from that time period. I think that's pretty normal-to start with one idea and land in another place. The prints were inspired by retro kitchen towels, radiator covers, vintage aprons, an ironing board cover, gardens, bed sheets and an old spool of thread. I love how the collection came together! Many thanks to the folks at Connecting Threads for their expertise in developing a line of fabric. There is a lot that goes into it!

Picking out the colors for the line is one of my favorite parts! This was the original color scheme that I selected when I was starting out. It's fun to look back and realize that we didn't veer too far from the original palette.

Along with designing the fabric, one of the parts of the process is coming up with quilts/projects to make using the new fabric. That part is fun, but also challenging for me, as I'm more of a jump into a pile of fabric and start sewing to see what happens. (I'm usually not much of a planner in that aspect.)

The show and tell bag (pattern available here) was designed for taking your quilts to show and tell at a guild meeting or for hauling projects to a retreat. When I wrote the pattern, the fabric was not yet printed, so I made all of my samples from different fabrics from the stash. You can see those bags in this post. The pattern comes with instructions for bags in 3 sizes: Medium, Large and Jumbo.

The bag shown here is the large size. I folded up a few quilts (a lap size and a twin size) and this bag holds them both easily.

The pattern is charm pack or layer cake friendly. There is a kit available here, if you'd like to make one of your own!

(Full disclosure: in my version I took out the 4 fabrics shown above, which were included in the kit and I still had enough to make the bag as shown.)

I thought it would be fun to do a pattern giveaway today! If you'd like to win a PDF copy of the Show and Tell Bag pattern, please leave me a comment in this post. In your comment, tell me about a friend who you would like to win a pattern for. If I pick your name, you AND your friend will each win a PDF copy of the pattern. International entries welcome! I'll pick a winner in a few days. Please make sure to include your email address so I can contact you if you win. Thanks!

I hope you are having a great week!