My Grandson's Dino Bag

 

On a quilt shop hop with a friend, she pointed out the awesome dinosaur fabric in one shop, knowing my grandson is a big dino fan. Of course, I had to buy some, not having a clue what I would end up doing with it.
Then one day, my grandson had to bring his laptop computer to Grandma's house and my daughter happened to mention that he didn't have a carrying bag for it. Thinking about this later, I asked my daughter if she thought he would like a carrier bag for his laptop made from the dinosaur fabric. She said yes, and so the adventure began. 

I already owned at least one " By Annie" pattern, plus a couple of Craftsy courses, but I hadn't had the opportunity to use any of them yet. I ordered this one and got the requisite hardware, opting to make the bigger of the two bags in the pattern. 

Cutting and labelling all of the parts

Aside from some pretty basic tote bags, I was really green in the art of bag making, especially one of this complexity. I even made my own zippers from zippers by the yard. 

I have to admit that I'm pretty impressed by my own work. 

It was by no means easy, working through multiple layers of fabric, foam, strapping, binding. 

But I got it done on time for Christmas. 
Maybe it's time to tackle some of those other bag patterns I have. But next time, I think I will quilt using a denser, but non-descript design. For this one, I used Dave's Dinosaurs, which is a fairly open design and appropriate to the theme of the fabric. But the dinosaurs in the quilting were basically lost in the multiple pieces used in making the bag. And some pieces were small enough to have benefitted from denser quilting.