Indigo Sewing Pouch

Two years ago I finished a cute little Indigo Siddhi mini quilt.  It was really fun to make something entirely by hand, but it wasn’t getting used much.  One quilter who inspires me tremendously is Megan Manwaring.  She has made a lot of pouches or bags using these mini quilt panels, and she inspired me.  I decided to try making a sewing pouch with it, but kept my original goal of an entirely hand sewn project.  So here is my Indigo sewing pouch!

I added two things to this piece.  First came pockets.  For these I chose a William Morris Strawberry thief print because the colors blend well with the indigo fabrics.  Plus, I love the strawberry thief pattern, and knew it would make me smile to see it here.  The fold is the opening to the pocket, and the edges are turned and hand stitched in place.  Not perfect, but still by hand!

My panel wasn’t perfectly square when I originally finished it.  That made adding the zipper more challenging at the end.  Above, you can see how I simply hand stitched the zipper on using the same big stitch.

I did great, except for the bottom joint, where it won’t lay perfectly flat.  Clearly I need more practice! Honestly, though, I’m not at all concerned.  This pouch is very functional, and I’ve been using it for a little while now.  I love the beauty of it, how unique it is, and also how lightweight it is!  Right now my indigo sewing pouch is the perfect size for my folk art flower applique blocks, which are slowly multiplying.

Someday it would be really cool to make a large Kawandi style quilt using this technique.  When I first took a class on it, that was my intention.  As you can see, I have far too many hand sewing projects going, so this idea will wait.