Nightingale Zipper Case

Another new project - not anticipated much before last week - was to make the new Nightingale Zipper Case, a new pattern by Kristina of Center Street Quilts @centerstreetquilts. It's a very unique bag, and I couldn't resist when there was a sew-along being offered. Again, I was happy to be able to pull fabrics from stash. I basically went with this colorway since the five(!) zippers you see below were the only ones I had enough of in one color. 

The lining and main fabric are both from the Ruby Star Society Geometry line - Hump Day and Ladders, both in the Turmeric colorway; the bindings are Cotton + Steel Freckles in Acorn.

I was able to keep up for three days, then life intervened, and I missed the final two days of the sew-along. 

But no worries, bits of time on and off yesterday (and this morning), let me finish in style.

The trickiest step, for me, was the finishing with the binding. Usually I end with hand-stitching binding, but I opted to machine-stitch here, to match all the top-stitching. I had to redo a couple of spots, and recommend using glue where the stitching is going over especially thick sections. 

Other than that, it was just follow the directions, one step at a time. Nothing about it was hard, I just needed to stay focused. 

And there was so much about it that was just really, really clever, construction-wise. Like the attached pouch. Who would have thought!?

One of the things I like about my use of fabrics particularly, was with the inside design of the case, the lining fabric was shown off in some areas, and the exterior fabric in others. I didn't plan that! But I really love it.

One other tip that Kristina did mention and I totally confirm, is to use coordinating thread in your bobbin, if you plan to machine-stitch the binding on in the final construction step. You can see, here and there, that thread show through from the front, and since it matches the accent/binding fabric, it's not a big deal. If it had been contrasting, it certainly would have.

There was one other little thing - something with my new sewing machine, that I felt really contributed to the nice top-stitching I was able to do on so many of the components. I'll share about that another day, but I really felt that the partnership between Kristina's pattern, beautiful fabrics, my machine, and my own focus to detail that helped make this a successful project for me.