How I made my latest hand bag

Since I haven't gotten to work in my studio for a while, I thought I'd look through my pictures of some of the work I did last summer. Here is the process I used for my latest bag. I'm glad I decided to take pictures of the steps that I took.

First, I started with random digging through my stash of scraps. I like to look through my scraps rather than full pieces of fabric. It's more inspiring to me.

Then, I layed out the scraps on my design board until I liked the composition.

When I landed on an arrangement that I liked, I sewed them together. This formed the background for the quilt piece.

After the background was sewn and pressed, I started to layer other elements on top. In my collages, I use small pieced scraps, raw edge fabric scraps, as well as things like yarn, string, buttons, or any 3-D do-dads I can find laying around my studio.

Then, I carefully carried the collage to my sewing machine and free motion quilted over the whole piece. When the quilt sandwich was assembled, I had to decide whether to  bind it to make a wall piece, or turn it into something else like a bag.

I kind of wish I had left it as an art piece, but I wanted to practice creating the elements for a bag. Here's the finished product. What do you think?