Another day, another fish bag... what can I say, it's addictive, baby fish mouth is sweeping the nation, and this whimsical fishy crafting is a good distraction from the daily horrors.
Inspired by the #FishGirlFallMAL, I dug out a fish-themed sewing pattern I've had for a while, but haven't gotten to sewing yet!
This fish bag is the Madison Moore Swim Along Crossbody Fish Bag sewing pattern, which is a quilted sling bag shaped like a fish. It has interchangeable details, like a variety of fish bodies (horizontal stripe! vertical stripes! solids!), different fins (pointy, scalloped, oval, double or single tail!), and an adjustable webbing strap with plastic clip buckle.
I went with View A, which has vertical stripes on the body. I used the asymmetrical tail fin, scalloped top fin, and oval body fins.
For my Swim Along bag, I pieced together linen and linen-blend scraps (you might recognize many of them from my scrappy linen quilt coat), including some oceanic ice-dyed Essex cotton/linen leftover from this Cieolo top I made my mom. This bag is an excellent scrapbusting project!
For the quilting, I used variegated thread to help blend all the colors.
The batting is fleece scraps from my stash. The cotton webbing and plastic clip, slides, and zipper are all from Wawak.
I think the bag is adorable and it was a fun project! I will admit though, that I am a little bit disappointed in the pattern's finishings. The inside is a bit messy, with some unfinished seam allowances around the zipper, and I found the instructions for sewing the tricky, thick bits (like where the zipper meets the fish nose (?) and the fish bottom meets the sides) to be lacking.
My finished product feels a bit sloppy. But it's super cute and I think that makes up for it a bit. The same could be said for me.
I wore/used the bag on a little oyster/art gallery/wine tasting crawl event Tim and I attended on Cape Cod last week. Between the fish bag and my pocho dress, both of which were called "cheerful" and "fun" multiple times by crawlers, gallery owners and oyster farmers, I'm calling it a rousing success.
I also wore it on a hike around the Wellfleet Audubon trails and the ranger (?), who was clearly also a sewist based on our conversation, also liked it:
