Why I Like Making Bags From Quilt Blocks

A tote bag is a completely ordinary object. You can buy one for four dollars at the grocery store. Nobody needs a handmade one.

That's exactly why I like making them.

An ordinary thing, made carefully.

There's a particular satisfaction in taking something plain and making it better than it needs to be. A bag is just a bag until it's pieced from a block you improvised, in fabric that used to be somebody's bedsheet, with a lining you chose because it made you happy when nobody will ever see it.

Then it's still a bag. It just happens to be a good one, and it's yours in a way a purchased one never is.

Elevating a basic is more interesting to me than making something precious. Precious things get put away. A bag gets used until it wears out, and I like that better.

You finish it the same day.

This is the honest reason I keep coming back.

A quilt is weeks. Sometimes months. There's a long stretch in the middle where you can't tell if it's working and you just have to keep going on faith. That stretch is real and it's where a lot of projects die in a closet.

A bag is a Saturday. You cut in the morning, you piece the block, you build the thing, and by dinner you're holding it. That's not a small pleasure. That's most of the pleasure.

I don't think we talk enough about how much of making is just wanting to see the finished thing. There's no shame in wanting the payoff sooner.

One block, all the way.

A quilt block on the side of a bag is the whole composition. It doesn't get lost among forty others, it doesn't get averaged out. It's the only thing there.

So the block has to be good, which makes you pay attention to it in a way you don't when you're making the twenty-third one in a series.

Then you carry it around.

A quilt lives on a bed. A bag goes to the store, the class, the post office. It's a quilt block out in the world at eye level, and people notice. I've had more conversations about quilting from a tote than from anything I've ever hung on a wall.

There's something good about the fact that the useful thing is also the beautiful thing, and that it's out doing its job rather than being protected.

If you're stuck partway through a quilt, or stuck before starting one, make a bag instead.

One block, one day, and something to carry home.