One of my favorite combinations is natural linen and red fabric. I bought these red and white quilting fabrics when I lived in Calgary. I think I was planning on a Log Cabin quilt in red and white. But I haven’t quilted in a while, and I’m trying to clean out my fabric stash, and I need a birthday present for my mom. So that’s where this fell out.

The structure of this bag isn’t much different than the grocery bags I made last year. I cut the bag rectangle 15 1/2" wide and 34" long, and sewed the gussets about 1 1/4" in from the corner. The big differences are that I lined this bag (I just made two bags, and sewed them together wrong-sides facing when I sewed on the handles) and added the red and white panels to the front and back.—nothing fancy, I just strip-pieced them and sewed them on top of the linen. I also ironed some medium-weight fusible interfacing to the lining to give the bag more body, since it turned out bigger than I was thinking when I started the project.

Originally I thought I would Gocco-screen something on the fabric, but I chickened out. However, I have quite a lot of this linen—it’s from my mom’s stash and it must have been on sale, or she was planning on making the entire family matching outfits, there are yards of it—so there will be many more opportunities.

My studio looks like a fabric tornado hit it, oy.