A tote for the journey

Our quilt guild is putting together raffle baskets for our upcoming quilt show.  Each basket will represent a global destination.  My group had "Africa" as our destination and  we decided on "safari" for our theme.  My contribution to the raffle basket was a tote bag.

For the outside of the bag, I chose an animal print that I felt could be used by either an adult or a child.  I picked a grey tiger stripe fabric for the inside of the bag and tied it all together with an orange fabric for contrast:

To begin, I wanted to do some straight line quilting on the animal fabric.   Time to dig out the guide bar from my machine's accessory kit:

The guide bar attaches to the needle bar of the machine, and the length is adjustable. ( I set mine for about 2 inches.)  To start,  I pinned the fabric to a piece of batting and secured it with one line of quilting along the far right edge.  For my first  row of quilting, I eased the guide bar along the first line of stitches and my new stitches were automatically lined up about 2 inches to the left.

For my next  row of quilting, I eased the guide bar along the previous stitching line and my new stitches were automatically lined up about 2 inches to the left of that one.

I continued all the way along the fabric until I had several evenly space quilting lines on the fabric.

For the interior of the bag,  I followed my own tutorial for making an easy peasy pocket.

For the handles, and some other helpful totemaking tips, I referred back to another blog post from the past.  (Both blog posts were written back in 2009! 😁 )

I found a nice wooden button for the closure, and here is how it turned out:

In keeping with the "safari" theme, I added in a kids color-by-number coloring book with a cute lion on the cover:

Ready for their closeup!

I couldn't wait.

This month's chosen color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is ORANGE .  So why am I showing a rainbow of blocks?

The truth is, I have learned that the real challenge of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is...waiting!

This month, I dutifully pulled out the orange scraps

then I made my usual half dozen "Birds in the Air" blocks,

and, also the bonus crumb block:

But...rather than pack them away to wait until next month, I went ahead and sewed up the same blocks from the  blue and purple fabrics that I cut out last month.  Now what was a gal to do but put them up on the design wall and take a peek?!

Each month I have been making 6 blocks of each color, but this layout requires only 4 of most colors, so I will have plenty of leftovers to put towards a second quilt.

Whenever the June color is announced, I'll have to consider starting a new pattern for each month's scraps, as I'm planning on keeping this kid sized,  but I'm just fine with that. If I can't think of a pattern, there is plenty of inspiration from the other bloggers who post each month over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge link up page.