Forget me not!

Several years ago I made my daughter a tote bag out of this stunning black floral print.  It had blue handles and I had found this orangey/yellow batik to go with it which I used for the pockets. There was plenty of the fabric left over so it went into my stash.  It got pulled out this week along with a matching green dot so I thought I would have some fun with it.  The some what abstract blue flowers on this print reminded me of forget-me-nots.  Why not start out with an appliqued forget-me-not on a hot pad but.....what should I use for the background.  A search through my stash revealed that I had plenty of light blue scraps and WOW they looked GREAT with the black print.  I did a quick quilt as you go stripe to use as the background.  Once the 6 1/2" block was made I appliqued the posie and leaves onto it and used the black print as the border.  It SCREAMED SPRING!!! and I loved it...I posed the question to my FB friends, should I make one of my little shoulder purses using the same design?  Yes, was their answer...famous last words, RIGHT!  

Well, there wasn't room  for this particular flower and still have the flap and button closure on the purse...it would spoil the design. When I visited my artist friend Doris this week, I showed her the hot pad and explained what I wanted to do and also the problems with the flap and button.  Doris really liked the light blue striped background and suggested multiple smaller flowers and to "just play with it," so to the drawing board I went.  I drew the block size on paper, drew a line where the flap would fall and also the button and designed around that. 

Getting the flowers and leaves laid out on the background proved to be VERY tricky, everything had to land just right.  This ended up being very time consuming.  Now it was time to make the purse.  Anything and everything that could go wrong, did go wrong!  I became very well acquainted with my seam ripper.  I ended up having to do everything twice, including sewing the button on and then having to reposition it.   I even had to rip out the binding since the seam when I connected one strip to the next ended up falling on the right hand bottom corner of the purse and no matter what I did, I could not get it to look right. By the time I finished it, it was definitely wine o'clock!  Some FB friends, when they saw the picture of the hot pad suggested a tote bag. Considering the problems I had with the purse, I am kind of wishing I had gone the tote bag route.  

I am glad to say that the apron went more smoothly.  I echoed the same quilt as you go design for the bib part on the tri-colored side of the apron and then echoed it as the top trim for pocket on the green side.  Believe it or not, I still have some of this black print left. Dare I even try to make an appliqued tote?