I met up with 7 ‘college’ friends a few weeks ago. (If you know me outside my crafty, then you’d know that ‘college’ for me was a miliary academy.) We flew in from Denver/Colorado Springs, Washington DC, Tampa and Atlanta for a short weekend in Nashville. We ate tons of good food – seriously, every meal there was amazeballs – bought cowboy boots, watched Diane Sawyer and Bruce Jenner talk about some things on TV, and talked and talked and talked. Oh, and well, 3 of us ran the Country Music 1/2 Marathon on Saturday too – fun fun race. Side note, this was my 2nd half marathon this year and my quickest post-baby (2:02:09).

I wanted to make something for each of the girls, and the Sew Together Bag was the pattern I chose. It is just a great bag! Every time I make a Sew Together Bag, I’m amazed at the clever-ness of the construction. I just finished up seven of these bags last month, so I had a lot of opportunity to marvel at this pattern!

The exterior fabric comes from a fat quarter bundle of Mochi by Rashida Coleman-Hale, the lining and pocket lining fabric is actual Army fabric – the same stuff that the uniforms are made of; Fabric.com sells yardage and that is where I purchased mine. Zippers come from Zip It on Etsy.

Getting these sewn up was easier and faster than I anticipated. I did it assembly-style, which wasn’t exactly interesting. One day I cut all the pockets and lining. Another day, I cut all the interfacing. Then it was the exterior. Another day I ironed the interfacing. Then it was putting together the interior. And so on.

The final few steps were a bit fiddly, and I broke 3 needles sewing the long zipper tabs down. But when I got them all complete and lined up, a big huge smile came across my face.