Kitchen Influence - PQ 13.3

 The wind is blowing today and it's cold again, so it's the perfect day to be indoors working on something quilt related, good thing I have something I am working on next door, because I already have my challenge done for the week! 

This week our Project Quilting challenge was Kitchen Influence. We were challenged to create using food and cooking as our inspiration. 

My husband is a snacker, he is rummaging around the kitchen all day long, and then still eats 3 meals a day, this bad habit is because he grew up in a house where the cookie jar was full 24/7, and his mom spent her days in the kitchen cooking. She got up and made eggs and pancakes for breakfast, baked bread, made at least a batch of cookies a week, a pie or two, a cake, then made huge meals for dinner, and supper, and everyone snacked all day long. They also lived on a ranch and worked really hard every day.  She had a husband, 4 very hungry growing boys, a brother in law, sometimes hired hands, and eventually grandkids that all ate a lot of food & cookies at her house. 

We still live on the ranch, but most of the work is done with tractors, no one is hitching up a team to feed the cows every morning, so in my opinion, snacks & 3 meals a day should go the way of the old west. I would be happy if we bought a loaf of bread every week and had a peanut butter sandwich every day until the bread ran out! We grew up in a house where my mom said, "If you're still hungry, eat an apple"...yet here I am married to the Cookie Monster.  

My mantra is "I hate cooking"  and I complain daily about it. But maybe if I am honest it's not that I hate to cook, it's that I don't like to cook every day for just the two of us. Because when it's all said and done, I actually love to make fun meals when there is company or when our family is all home, and not to brag, but I am a really good cook. One of my favorite time wasters is watching people cook delicious recipes on instagram reels, and wish I had the ingredients to recreate them. I always think I could win one of those cooking shows where they put you in a kitchen with limited ingredients and tell you to create a 5 star meal without a recipe. But cooking takes time, and you have to be able to get the ingredients you need for fun recipes, and we live in the sticks so most of those ingredients are 100 miles away, and by the time you drive to get them, you don't want to cook anymore. Or you spend 3 hours making something, and there are no leftovers so you have to do it all over again 3 hours later! Who has time to cook when there are quilts to be made? 

Needless to say when the challenge was Kitchen Influence, I just had to laugh, my most hated place in the house! LOL 

I knew I didn't want to make a pot holder, and we have more mug rugs than mugs. I thought about placemats but didn't feel that ambitious. So I googled quilted kitchen gift ideas thinking maybe there would be something inspiring I could make for a gift. There were a lot of really fun wine bags, some towel things that would be nice to give, some cool little quilted covers for casserole dishes, actually quite a few really neat things to make and give. But what caught my eye was this fun little Bubble Bag from a shop on Etsy called Love From Beth,  I decided I needed that pattern and that was what I was going to make. In my dream kitchen I would have a fun shelf with a whole row of these bright little bags holding...snacks! LOL 

The lovefrombeth Etsy shop has all sorts of really neat quilted container patterns, some really cool quilt patterns I need, and what's great about them is most of them are digital downloads, and since she is from the UK makes it really handy to order and have it right away. So I ordered the pattern Monday morning, printed it and started the stash dig. I didn't have to dig far and this fun vintage piece popped out and said pick me! It was perfect. 

I had a green thread in my longarm machine and pinned a piece of muslin to the edges beside the quilt I am working on so I could do a quick little quilting. I picked muslin for the lining fabric thinking if I used it to put any food items in I would want it to be easy cleaning. But now after I have it done and know I am not going to put food in it, I wish I had found something a little more exciting. 

I don't like to read and follow directions, so it took a couple of attempts to get things right. If I had been reading and comprehending I would have read the directions before I printed them and realized that I needed to check the box on my printer that said print in actual size. The first bag I attempted was to small and the bottom didn't fit right, and I sewed the darts on the wrong side & there were ugly threads all over. So I started over again and thankfully my printer ran out of ink AFTER the pattern was printed in the correct size. I was also thankful I had quilted a large piece of fabric with the intention of making something else with the extra. 

It is such a fun little bag and I know that I will be making more, from start to finish, leaving out the mistake parts, it probably only took a couple hours to make, there is some hand sewing so that was the most time consuming. I did make my handle differently from the pattern and attached it from the edge of the bag before I put on the binding. Now I wish I had a cute little miniature Pomeranian to stick in it! 

So that's my Project Quilting 13.3 Kitchen Influence project for this challenge. I made lasagne last night so I know I am free from the kitchen for at least 3 meals, which means more time to make more cute little bubble bags!