New Bag - April BQL Challenge Bag
Yesterday I finished making this bag which is from the British Quilters List April pattern (slightly adapted). Having treated myself to a new sewing machine a couple of weeks ago I used various features that came with it to create the bag.

I only had a smallish piece of the printed pansy material so decided to team that up with the plain cream and use the new embroidery unit to embroider the pansies onto it. The machine that I have bought is a Bernina and has the Bernina Stitch Regulator that I can attach to it so I used that for doing all of the quilting - good practice to find out how best to use it. I used the walking foot to quilt the handles and one of the inbuilt embroidery patterns to put a stipple pattern along the cream border at the top. And of course used the machine to sew it all together. One of the feet that I got to go with the machine is the edge stitch foot and I used this to top stitch the cream band at the top to the pansy material. I'm quite pleased with the result - it's quite a large bag but far too pretty to use for grocery shopping which was the original idea of the BQL challenge.

So - I love my new sewing machine - now I am getting used to having lots of little (and big) extras that my other machine didn't have - like a thread cutter - sooo useful and cuts down on thread wastage, the needle down position and a knee lift for raising the presser foot to turn corners which you do a lot of with applique. My new machine and I are going to be very happy together I know!