Sew Pink 2024

I've had the privilege to take part in the SewPINK Initiave with ByAnnie.com for the first time this year, and I'm thankful to be able to team up with so many great designers to help support this cause.

What is SewPINK? It's an online event focused on breast cancer awareness hosted by the wonderful team at ByAnnie.com. Their goals are to raise awareness, promote screenings, foster community, and support breast cancer research. There are links at the bottom of this post with more information, to find screenings near you, and a donation link.

This is my first time taking part, so I took a little extra time deciding on what sort of pink project I would like to make. I'm not a very proficient bag maker (yet), so I thought this was the perfect excuse to get better, and try out one of the ByAnnie Basics patterns - the Easy Does It pouch. It's a free pattern that comes with lots of extra help in the form of a video class on the ByAnnie website, and it's perfect for bag novices like me.

This blog post contains some affiliate links. If you make a purchase through a link, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Click here to read more about how I choose links to share.

I didn't want to just make a plain pink pouch, though, so I designed a fun heart quilt block for the side panels.

I wanted to use up some of my scraps, so crumbs seemed like a great idea, and a heart was the perfect shape for this panel. I've included the tutorial on how to make the blocks for the side panel below.

ByAnnie supplied me with the Soft & Stable and the bright pink handbag zipper I would need to make the pouch, and I went through my scraps and stash to find the perfect fabrics for the inside, outside, handles, binding, and of course for the heart. I had this great black and white Mixology Luxe by Camelot fabric left over from backing my Holiday Spirit quilt, so I used that for the main fabric, and picked three Ruby Star Society fat quarters for the rest of the bag. The two Hole Punch fabrics were the lining (the white with pink dots) and binding (pink with white dots), and the bright pink Speckled became my handles, because it matched so well with the zipper.

How to make a reverse applique heart block

Reverse applique can be a bit tricky, but since this pouch isn't going to get washed like a quilt, I decided on raw-edge applique. 

You'll need the following materials to make this block:

• Assorted pink scraps, enough to cover your heart shape
• 10" x 7" main fabric (the white and black one in my example)
• Heat-n-bond lite
• Lightweight interfacing if your main fabric is a light colour
• Piecing thread (I used my regular Gutermann polyester in white)
• Decorative thread (I used Aurifil 18wt in Pink)
• A heart shape to trace - to get the one I used, just fill in your details below and I'll send it directly to your inbox.

This will also sign you up to my email list, but if you find that what I send out is not your cup of tea, you can unsubscribe again at any time, no hard feelings ;-)

1. To make the heart block, sew together your crumbs (that's small, oddly shaped scraps) to make a piece of fabric large enough to extend past the heart shape by about 1/2" all the way around. 
   
   
   
   
2. Trace the heart shape onto the paper side of the Heat-n-bond, then cut out the shape about 1/2" bigger than traced.
   
   
   
   
3. Place the cutout on your crumb block and trace around the outside of the paper shape, then cut the crumb block on that traced line.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Iron the Heat-n-bond to the back of the main fabric, making sure it's centered. You can fold the fabric in half both lengthwise and widthwise to get crease marks, then fold the heart the same way and line up the creases to center the heart on the fabric. Iron it on according the manufacturer's directions.
   If your main fabric is very light, iron a lightweight interfacing to the back of it before adding the heat-n-bond. I didn't do that on mine, and wish I had because unfortunately in some light you can see the edges of the heart through the main fabric.
   
   
   
   
5. Cut out the main fabric along the traced line of the heart, so that you end up with a rectangular piece of fabric that has a heart shaped hole in it, with about a 1/2" wide rim of Heat-n-bond around the outside of the hole. Discard the heart, or if you cut really precisely, use it for a different project.
   
   
   
   
6. Remove the paper from the back of the main fabric. Place the fabric wrong side up on your ironing surface, then place the crumb block on top, wrong side up as well, so that right side of the crumb block is facing the Heat-n-bond. Line up the crumb block so that it covers all exposed Heat-n-bond, place a pressing cloth over top and iron the crumb block to the main fabric.
   
   
   
   
7. Put your decorative thread in the machine (switch needles if you need to), then stitch around the raw edge of the main fabric with a decorative stitch to secure it to the crumb block. You could choose a zigzag, a simple blanket stitch, or something a little more involved like this crosstitch-looking stitch I used. It's stitch #34 on my Bernina Aurora 440QE. Play around with some stitches on a scrap piece of fabric and see which one you like best.
   
   
   
   
8. Now the block is ready to be turned into a side panel for the Easy Does It pouch! I chose to make both my side panels from crumb blocks, but you could also just do one, or use one block and piece the other side panel from strips or squares.
   
   

I decided to quilt the two heart panels with echo quilting. I used a light pink Gutermann thread inside the hearts, and my white piecing thread to echo the shape around the outside of the heart. I specifically picked my regular piecing thread here because I didn't want the quilting to show up too much, it was just supposed to give definition, not be a design element of its own. The rest of the bag is quilted with a 1" diagonal cross hatch. 

I loved having the video instructions to accompany the pattern, and I actually barely read any of the instructions, just followed Annie on the screen as she showed everything step-by-step and it all came together very easily.

I had a little bit of trouble with the binding on the inside of the bag, but I found using some Elmer's school glue with a precision tip helped to hold the binding in place so the sewing was a lot easier. I don't normally glue baste my binding on a quilt, but with having all these corners, and bag pieces that were getting in the way a bit, it made it more difficult to keep it all nice and smooth, so the glue basting helped a lot.