Amy Does it Again!! Weekender Bag

Have you ever bought a pattern and said "I'm waiting for just the right fabric to make this."?  I do that all the time.  I have patterns that are several years old that I swore I would "make it soon."  Or . . . even better, got all the fabric AND the pattern and there it sits.  I have half an entire closet full of those things, as well as a box of patterns just yearning to be made. 

However, there is one designer's patterns that I always immediately want to make and that is Amy Butler.  I have been eyeing up her Weekender Travel Bag pattern and finally purchased it when I knew I definitely had the time to make it. 

Beware -- This pattern takes LOTS of Fabric and a really huge zipper, which is sort of hard to find.  I recommend going to your local quilt shop and ask them if they can special order one for you.  This bag took a 24" non-separating zipper.  Holy cow!!

Although I LOVE Amy Butler's fabric, I found other that I thought would be incredible for this bag.  So I purchased the entire collection of Moda's Hometown.  This bag looked to me like the 1960's Pan Am style bag and I wanted fabric that said "I'm going places."  It was perfect. 

The fabric has names of every big and every small town you could possibly think of.  If you look closely by the number 4, you can see Appleton.  This bag was relatively simple and very fun to make.  The front and the back of the bag is one large pocket.  Perfect to put your plane ticket in one side and your Kindle in the other side.  The side pockets work well for a water bottle or are even deep enough to put your keys and cell phone in and they won't fall out. 

The one downfall to this pattern was the inside.  The pattern called for no inside pockets and you know a girl has to have lots of pockets in her bag.  Well, having purchased the ENTIRE LINE of fabric, I certainly had that worked out. 

I added a pleated flap pocket with two additional open slots on each side of the flap on one side.  On the other, a zippered pocket sewn on three sides so that you could also have an extra pocket behind the zippered section.  As you can see, thanks to that enormous, hard-to-find zipper, the bag opens nice and wide so you can see EVERYTHING!! 

I recently went on a weekend trip with my husband and had plenty of room for clothes for Friday through Sunday, two Kindles, an iPod, makeup bag, an extra pair of shoes (of course) and it still easily zippered closed.  Fantastic!! 

Buy the pattern . . . make the bag.