My cousin Freya turned forty today.  I made her a Frenchy bag (to replace the bag I made her from vintage barkcloth fabric that fell apart in the wash).  It’s the same Amy Butler pattern that I used for Donna’s Christmas bag.

The exterior fabrics are by Kaffe Fassett, and the interior pocket fabrics are from Moda’s Full Moon Forest line.  I made the matching make-up purse from Nicole Mallalieu’s pattern.  I fused a layer of thin wadding to the outside fabric of the purse – it really helps give it a more professional finish.  I think I’m addicted to wadding for bag making.

The bag has the usual “thornberry” features – fully interfaced, both the exterior and lining (the fabric is fairly light-weight), with the exterior also fused with thin wadding.  There is the usual key fob inside:

and a magnetic snap.  As with Donna’s bag, I divided the interior pockets into two.  I hand-stitched the lining to the outer along the seamline between the top and the body of the bag, rather than attempting to machine topstitch on the previous topstitching line as per the instructions – too difficult to get a nice finish, in my opinion!  The hand stitching didn’t take long, and looks much better.

It is so difficult to photograph the inside of bags!  I also did a little machine quilting around the red/pink flowers on one side of the bag – although you’ll have to look very closely to make it out!  This fabric lends itself very well to feature quilting and/or beading – not that I had time to do either, but further embellishment would look really lovely.

And yes, she likes it!  Happy Fortieth my Favourite Fizz!