A foxy diaper bag

I'm officially getting back into the swing of things around here, and that includes sewing! This month's St. Louis Modern Quilt Guild meeting was on Saturday, and it got me in just the mood to head down to the basement and get to work. I finally started on a quilt for B's room, but you don't get to see that today. Instead, here's a project I finished before our Italy trip but didn't have a chance to show you. Introducing, B's new diaper bag!

Like so many things, this one was on my to-do list for a long time. Our old diaper bag was just too dang big now that we don't have to cart around as many baby things for B, so I wanted to make a smaller, cuter bag for us to use.

Of course, I had to use some fox fabric, right? I had a lot of the Foxy Too fabric left over from making B's fox and the houndstooth pants, and this was the perfect project for it.

The inside is lined with the Elvendale print from the Fox Hollow collection. After I finished the bag, Matt told me he actually preferred this fabric over the Foxy Too print and wished I'd put it on the outside. Yeesh. It is a great fabric, though. I love that fox peeking around the tree stump. See him?

The strap and inside and outside pockets use two Flea Market Fancy prints, which help to break up the craziness of the main fox print. I think they also help to keep the bag from becoming too babyish. This is definitely a bag I can use for other things once we no longer need a diaper bag.

I used the Osoberry bag pattern featured on Whip Up, and it worked out great. The tutorial is super simple and very easy to follow. After all the cutting and interfacing, the bag basically came together in one night. The only major change I made was adding more pockets inside. The tutorial only includes a small slip pocket on the inside, and I decided to basically mimick the big outside pockets on the inside. I love how you quilt the fabric on the bottom and around the back of the bag to help reinforce the bottom and add a little visual interest.

One of the things I loved most about the design of this bag was the placement of the straps. They're attached pretty low on the sides of the bag, so when the bag is less full, the top flops over like a messenger bag, but it can also be filled really full like a tote bag.

And a few pics of the bag in action in Italy

Now that we're home, I need to shorten the strap a bit, but otherwise, we're loving it. Ciao!