I accumulated a bunch of fun sewing and quilting books over the holidays and I’m excited to share them with you over the next few days. My hope is that you’ll find something that resonates with you and add it to your crafty library!

Today I’ll start with On The Go Bags by Lindsay Connor and Janelle MacKay.

On the Go Bags by Lindsay Conner and Janelle MacKay

First off, this is a great book for people like me, who want to get over their fear of 3-D sewing!! It contains sewing patterns for a total of 15 projects including purses, totes, organizers and more.

 

For sure, I need to make this laptop keeper and I love the fact that it’s one of the easiest projects in the book! In fact, I appreciate how each project includes the difficulty level right at the start of the instructions. On the Go Bags includes 5 easy projects, 6 intermediate projects and 5 advanced projects. There’s something for everyone in this book!

Here’s a pic of the table of contents so you can get a feel for the range of projects included.

I love all of the great sewing designers they included, too. I’m not as involved in the sewing community as I am in the quilting community. However, there are several names I recognize and I can attest that the quality of their patterns in this book is just as good as the material that they produce individually.

Here’s another project I want to make, again from the easy section:

I need lots and lots of purse and tote pockets!!

For those like me that haven’t sewn too many functional items besides quilts, I really enjoyed the beginning sections of the book which includes things like how to work with interfacings, and how to make bag straps. There’s even a section on bias binding and piping (which could be applied to making quilts).

I think On the Go Bags is a great book to add to your sewing library!

I’m curious, what kinds of non-quilty items do you like to sew?