Today I’m sharing the first project, my quilted Buckthorn Backpack pattern featuring Quarry Trail, my newest fabric collection. I’m so happy to be able to start sharing these projects here and I hope that it’ll give you some inspiration to start your own project using Quarry Trail!

If you’re new here, my latest fabric collection with Robert Kaufman Fabrics was released earlier this summer (which means that shops get to see it and order it for their store). Now the collection is slowly shipping out to those shops, so be sure to call or ask your local quilt shop!

Quarry Trail Base Fabric

Quarry Trail (like all my previous collections) features my hand-drawn designs overprinted on Essex, Essex Yarn Dyed, and Essex Homespun. It’s a fun mix of textures and colors and I hope you’ll love it. Because Essex is NOT a canvas weight substrate (it’s a 5.6 oz. weight), you’ll want to be sure to make some changes to any pattern that might call for a canvas weight (8 oz. weight or more) like this Buckthorn Backpack for example. It’ll need a little more support in order for it to be it’s best for bag making.

Quilted Exterior

So for this Buckthorn I quilted all the exterior pieces to fusible fleece before cutting them to their final size. I started with each exterior piece being an inch or so bigger in each direction. This allows for some shrinkage that is common when quilting fabric to any batting or fleece. If you’re going for a very dense quilting design, you might to want to add a few inches in either direction to account for that shrinkage. Just something to consider!

Because mine is a fairly non-dense quilting (I chose a straight-line grid), I rough cut my exterior pieces just slightly bigger. Once I was done quilting each piece, I trimmed them to their final dimensions. The final result of the fabric is perfect for a bag! I hope you give it a try with any bag really. It’s a great option if the exterior fabric choice you love doesn’t quite have the stiffness you’ll need for bags, and perfect for any Essex fabric in my bag-making opinion.

Once I had all the pieces quilted, the only other modification I made was to use a piece of fusible woven interfacing (Pellon SF101) on the Zipper Binding piece. Other than that, everything was good to go!

Lining

I did line the backpack with canvas, this time using Big Sur canvas in Grayish. I didn’t grab an interior shot before I shipped it off! So you’ll have to use your imagination. Using Big Sur as a lining is an easy choice for me. I love the colors they offer and then I get to skip using any additional interfacing on the lining pieces. Hello time saver!

I love the final result! It really is fun to see this quilted version of my design come to life. I need to take time to do that more often! So yes, it does take extra time, but I think it’s worth it.

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• Pattern: Buckthorn Backpack (& Tote) Pattern
• Fabric: exterior is the leaf print (Quarry Trail) by me for Robert Kaufman Fabrics, lining is Big Sur Canvas in Grayish
• Notions are all available in my shop if you need anything:
  • Webbing (you’ll need 4 yards of the 1.5″-wide webbing)
  • hardware (kit)
  • zipper (backpack uses the 16″ length!!)

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Hope you enjoy seeing these projects, we had a fun family outing taking these pictures. It was such a hot and humid day, but everyone rose to the occasion!

Next time, I’ll chat about my inspiration for this collection as well as some photos of the fat quarter stack and layer cake. yay fabric! In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing many more projects as well! Thanks for being here.