dancing on a rainbow

With the various bits that a small ballerina needs stuffed into my already-full-to-the-brim nappy bag, the weekly trek too and from dance class demanded a more organisation cargo solution, and so I promised Miss Butterfly a ballet bag. “A rainbow one, mummy?” “of course, my love, if you want a rainbow, we’ll make a rainbow.” HA. FAMOUS. LAST. WORDS. The baby asleep, I pulled her onto my lap, and we snuggled as we scrolled through my “bags and pouches” Pinterest board. We slowly drifted down the page, until she found a cute ruffly messenger bag. I had already had a satchel in mind, so that worked perfectly. “Shall we put the rainbow on the flap?” I asked, thinking some cute flying geese would do the trick and be quite easy to whip up. But no. I made the mistake of letting her loose on the “quilting and patchwork” board, didn’t I? She decided she was quite partial to this kaleidoscope mini, which I quickly dumped into Photoshop, and with a quick check of Alley’s rainbow kaleidoscope of awesome, I had the approval of the project manager. A quick google sourced us a pattern, which also got pasted into photoshop and resized to fit the bag – 2.75″ per block. 12 small foundations printed, a raid of the scrap boxes and we were off.

The piecing of the flap took a couple of weeks, mainly due to time restrictions in finding a dedicated time to sit and concentrate on a block at a time, but eventually it came together. After getting the main bag and lining cut, I made a trip to the fabric store in search of strap adjusters. With all the effort going into the bag, I wanted to give it the longest life possible! But of course, there were none. Kirsty came to my aid and recommended a lovely little eBay shop, who I can’t recommend highly enough. Great range and great service wins my consumer loyalty without question. Of course though, that then meant I was tapping my foot waiting for the postie, but before long the sliders had arrived, and the bag was assembled and ready to go. And go it has. Everywhere. Generally followed by a very proud Butterfly announcing “see my new ballet bag? My mummy made it for me and it’s a RAINBOW”. And really, that there? That is the exact reason I sew and craft and make stuff for my small people. Because it gives them such a buzz to have a special something that was made just for them. It may not be perfect, but it is full of love, and (I hope) 30 years from now she won’t remember that the points didn’t match in places, or that certain fabrics weren’t quite right. She will remember the days she sat on my lap and we sewed together, and we made her a bag just like she wanted.

This bag marks completed pins number twelve and thirteen (of fourteen required to date) in my “totally pinspired” challenge to turn my pins into projects. We are aiming to complete a minimum of two pins a month. For all my Totally Pinspired projects, click here. You can find my Pinterest boards here, and my completed pins board here. If you’ve been totally pinspired as well, I’d love to see what you’ve been making!