Two Sloan Travel Bags, Completed

 

These Sloan Travel Bags (pattern by Sara Lawson of Sew Sweetness) are completed, and I am very pleased with them.  Our trip to New Zealand last spring was of the nature and hiking variety, not the shopping kind.  We did run across one fabric store outside of Auckland which seemed to special in Civil War reproduction fabrics.  And I pretty much reconciled myself to not finding any fabrics indicative of New Zealand.  However, on the South Island in the relatively small town of Oamaru which we went to for the penguin nests, I found a fabric shop directly across the street from our "Fawlty Tower"-esque hotel.  And here were a handful of New Zealand fabrics.  The black and white one represents the various weaving patterns the Maori used.  The red-black-cream fabric uses Maori symbols.  Can you see the black-and-white ferny fabric on the side of the red/black/cream bag?  Ferns are ubiquitous, and there are some kiwis hidden among the frond.  The outer pockets on both bags are a black-on-black print featuring fern fronds. That one highly-saturated red became the pockets in the lining of both bags. 

My favorite part of the bag-making process:  the outer bag and lining bag ready for the magic!

This bag has a wide zippered closure at the top. 

Two zippered pockets on the inside, two pockets on each end, and a fob for a key, a feature which I think is a necessity in a travel bag.

The two outer pockets with a magnetic snap

Meanwhile, this scrappy log cabin is in one big piece, and I have decided to do an inner yellow border and then an outer piano key border.  I've done this once before and remember loving the look.  And if it's one thing I have, it's more scraps.  There's a little reminder in the bottom corner of this picture that I need to get moving on this knit clothing project.  Maybe not this week, but certainly next!

6.5" logs awaiting assembly for the piano key outer border