Love Notes – Making Backpack

Hi Makers! It is Sara from @SaraBQuilts here to talk about the cutest new collection, Love Notes, by Riley Blake Designs and Lindsay Wilkes of The Cottage Mama. Love Notes is the fussy cutter’s dream, with adorable forest animal musicians, singing birds, and sweet little flowers. The color story of Love Notes is very simple with reds, pinks, blues, and whites. 

Sometimes the best projects we can make are gifts for our friends! This collection reminded me of a dear friend and her love of little animal prints and pastel fabric colors, so I decided to make her a bag. I chose the Making Backpack by Noodlehead (pattern can be found HERE) because it allowed me to make the front of the backpack the focus with a fun design and is relatively easy to make!

Even though there is no green in this collection, the idea of a sweet little strawberry was too cute not to make. I actually love the blue fabrics replacing what would normally be green- it adds a whimsical element to already whimsical fabric! The leaves were Text in Blue, Butterfly Floral in Sky, and Flowers in Blue, and Songbirds in Sky. 

Instead of making the strawberry one fabric, I took advantage of the multiple pink, red, and peach fabrics in the collection to make a patchwork strawberry. I even threw in a tiny sawtooth star using Flowers in Red and Butterfly Floral in Soft Pink! I fussy cut the animals in Main in Pink and Main in Apricot. The strawberry had its own little band!

Songbirds in White made the perfect background fabric for the front of the backpack. I used my favorite dark navy Perle cotton to hand quilt some stitches around the strawberry to make it pop. Love Notes is the perfect collection for a little hand quilting!

In my opinion, no bag is complete without a ruffle somewhere. I used Butterfly Floral in Soft Pink for the strap and Floral in Red for the ruffle. The back of the backpack is Plaid in Blue, which ties together all the pinks, red, blues, and whites. For the backpack sides, I used Songbirds in Apricot which might be my favorite fabric in the collection! 

I chose to use a Riley Blake Designs Coordinating Basic, Swiss Dot in Celestial, for the lining of the backpack. I wanted it to be darker bc the inside of backpacks always tend to get a little messy! I used Plaid in Apricot for the lining binding and it was a nice contrast to the Swiss Dot in Celestial. 

I am so pleased with how this Love Notes backpack turned out. I am also very happy to have this collection in my stash for future fussy cuts and scrappy quilting! I see 1 inch hexies with musical squirrels and blue birds in my future! I am excited to see what you make with Love Notes and hope you love it as much as I do!

Happy Making!

Sara (@SaraBQuilts)