Spotlight: Let's Get Organized

August 15, 2018 by

Jacque Davis

ByAnnie.com partners with local quilts shops all across the nation to bring you a monthly pattern series based on the theme, Let’s Get Organized!

This program is designed to teach you useful bag-making skills by starting you out with the basics and gradually adding new techniques as each month goes by.

By the end of the year you'll not only have a lot of useful projects to organize your home, work space, and car, but you'll have learned a wide variety of techniques to increase your sewing skill repertoire!

Keep reading to find out all the neat things you could learn:

Month 1: Stash and Dash

Learn all the basics, such as: how to work with ByAnnie’s Soft and Stable, lightweight mesh, vinyl, covered strapping, zippers, bias binding, and hardware.

You'll also discover how to make three zippers out of one by sewing strategic stitches and attaching an extra pull. You're going to love that trick!

Month 2: Nesting Baskets

With these baskets you'll learn to cut pattern pieces from a template, how to make perfect circles for the base and lid, and how to join pieces with curved edges.

You'll also discover the best tools for marking lines to align the sturdy handles and vinyl label.

Month 3: Ditty Bags

With this bag, you'll continue to practice quilting with fabric and Soft and Stable.

Then, learn to make and attach borders and handles, how to attach a single-slide zipper, how to sew along curved edges, and how to make and attach bias binding.

Month 4: Project Bags

Use the skills learned in the Stash and Dash project to improve your skills of quilting, sewing with vinyl, adding zippers, making and attaching stabilized straps, and binding a project.

Then, practice piecing and adding borders, too. You'll love the techniques for hiding all the raw edges of your seams!

Month 5: Needle Case & Wool Pincushion

Continue honing your skills from previous month's projects, and learn how to make several pockets and see-through divisions as well as felted wool "pages."

You'll also learn to print labels on twill tape using your home printer!

Month 6: Open Wide!

Now that you've mastered our "normal" style of zipper installation, it's time to learn something new!

Open Wide! features a brand-new style of zipper installation as well as a different method of binding the edges of the zipper.

Learn to make a zipper tab to finish the end of the zipper, too.

Month 7: Thread Dispenser/Sewing Case 2.0

Continue to perfect your skills of quilting fabric with Soft and Stable, attaching zippers, sewing with vinyl, and binding edges.

Then, learn the new skill of how to sew with ultrasuede, the secret ingredient to keeping your threads in place.

This pattern also shows you how to make a stretchy loop to close the case, allowing it to expand as you fill it up.

Month 8: Just In Case

Review great techniques such as making and attaching bias binding, rounding corners, and attaching zippers to mesh and vinyl pockets.

Then, discover new skills such as attaching invisible magnetic snaps and how to attach borders and pockets in the proper order.

Month 9: Power Trip

With this bag you'll learn to make and attach a sturdy handle, make inner zippered pockets, and how to easily bind mesh pockets with fold-over elastic.

Practice installing a double-slide zipper as you make a zipper side strip which allows the bag to open flat for easy access.

Month 10: All Aboard! Train Case Trio

You’ll learn how to sew a zipper on a curved edge — another new zipper installation style.

Discover how to finish the edges and stitch the binding to the bag to refine the shape of the train case. Though this is a bit more difficult, you'll have had lots of practice by the time you get to this project, so you'll feel confident that you can accomplish this step with ease!

Month 11: Catch All Caddy

You’ll be thrilled to learn how to make bellowed inner dividers. Their ingenious design allows the interior fabric dividers to be fully expandable, yet also able to fall flat against the caddy when not in use.

This project also introduces a new style of handles which are padded with Soft and Stable and attached to the caddy using rectangle rings.

Month 12: A Place For Everything

You’ll take all skills you learned as you worked on the other projects and perfect them with this bag.

New skills include learning how to make expandable vinyl pockets and learning the secrets to attaching hook-and-loop fastener to pocket pages!

Want to get involved?

As you can see, signing up for a monthly bag-making program is a great way to build your skills throughout the year. But it's so much more than that. Not only will you have a lot of fun, but it's a great opportunity to meet new people, make like-minded friends, get access to great teachers, share your own knowledge and skills with others, all while supporting a local quilt shop in your community!

If this sounds like the program for you, check below to see if a store near you is participating. We had a group of stores start the Let's Get Organized program in July and another group that will be starting in September. We will continue to offer this program to stores in 2019 and beyond.

Don't see your local quilt shop listed below? Talk to your local shop owners about the Let's Get Organized program and have them call or email us at [email protected] for more information.