My Travel Bag

About a week before I was to leave Florida, Rachael wrote me on Messenger and said, “I need you over here at the store at such and such a time.” I wondered “Why?” She said, “Julie is going to be over here then.”

Rachael had decided that I needed a nice big, squishable purse. I had had to replace my purse because it was peeling - (sad face) and beginning to look terrible. However, I wanted a big one for travel. I couldn’t find one locally at thrift stores and really didn’t have time to go looking around each individual store trying to find a purse. I looked on Amazon but didn’t find one that actually struck me as something I wanted.

Anyway…I wanted a tote size bag.

I found a new (to me) purse at a thrift store (wow, prices have gone up!) - but it was sadly too small for what I wanted for the trip back. I now needed a bigger bag to use as my hand bag - something I could put my purse in PLUS my bag of electronics and headphones I had purchased.

So, Julie made me one. We met at the store and I chose this Philip Jacobs/Kaffe Collective fabric. A few days later Julie brought the finished bag to the store. I still can’t figure out WHY she wanted to to do it. I know it was a lot of work!

But it was/is beautiful and will be great for other trips as well! It is such a pleasure to just look at.

It had room for my purse, a bag of electronic goodies (cables, a hard drive). and some headphones - plus a Logic Problems book I like to travel with.

While it is big - it did “squish” up and I could put it under the seat in front of me on each leg of the journey! It helped that I didn’t have it jammed pack full - there is no way it could have if that had been the case.

The pattern is “By Annie”. Julie made it bigger than the original pattern - I think she said she expanded it by 2” wider and longer - so that expanded it considerably!

Thanks, Julie, for such a gorgeous bag!