Is it a Zebra? Is it a Giraffe?

Is it a zebra? Or a giraffe? Miss Meliss was here for 10 days in May and one of the things we did was go fabric shopping. She asked me to make some tote bags for her friends back in Dallas that were caring for her dogs.

We had fun browsing through the forest of huge bolts of fabric at Bonanza. Bonanza is a huge fabric store that specializes in bridal and formal wear fabric.

They also have lots of trimmings. In the past few years they have been increasing their selection of linens, cottons and cotton spandex fabrics. And since a big, mediocre Mexican fabric chain opened nearby, they have an even better selection.

These fabrics were imported and proclaimed “ Algodin Americano” of “ lino Americano” which means American cotton, or linen.

The fabrics are very wide , and less expensive than in the US. I still cannot get novelty prints and beautiful buttons, but they do have a rainbow assortment of zippers hanging without packages on a wall, and art piece by itself. And believe it or not, they carry invisible zippers and told me where I can buy an invisible zipper foot.

It does my heart good to be able to find fabrics and notions here.

I still have to order interfacing and some other notions from the US.

But back to the jungle.

Melissa and I fell head over heels for the faux zebra and giraffe prints. They are wide ( 1.5 meters) soft, and inexpensive less than $5.00 Us per meter.

I usually like to mix prints on the bags making the pockets a coordinating or contrasting print. But these were too gorgeous and too busy to mix.

So I made one side of the bag in zebra print and one half in giraffe print.

When I sent photos front and back to friends, they all said your bags are beautiful. Everyone thought they were two separate bags!

And what a nightmare, being a micro-fiber they were already dense, then I bonded two pieces with Heat N Bond, and created a canvas like fabric that was nearly impenetrable! I broke a lot of needles and cursed …a lot!

But the bag is gorgeous. And here is a close up of the African beads I attached to the zipper pull.

I also made this lovely yellow and white polka-dot bag for Miss Meliss’ friend. And it was also a tough sewing job. But they both look so lovely completed…like child birth, I forgot the pain…

Last week’s guest at the HoneyMoon Hut very graciously took the bags back with them to mail.