A Treasure Bag

I seem to go through phases. Sometimes I'm reading four books a week, sometimes I'm running seven miles a day, sometimes I'm playing piano for an hour and a half a day, sometimes I'm being an excellent wife and cooking a delicious dinner (on time) every evening, and sometimes I am working on a million sewing projects at once.
So, this is not turning into a crafting blog, but that is what I have been doing lately.
Emily has always been a collector of treasures. She has been carrying around an old Randall's produce bag filled with her nature treasures for the last couple of days, so I promised her a real treasure bag this week. I found a tutorial for a child-size messenger bag here and put it together today. It is not written very well so I had to backtrack a couple of times, which was frustrating, and sewing with all the kids awake is always a challenge, but overall it was pretty simple. Joseph gets credit here for taking the younger kids shopping so I could finish up. What a good husband!

As a side note, I always sort of laugh at myself for getting so frustrated with the kids for making it hard for me to make a quilt for them or sew a pair of pants for them or read a book on parenting or make a family meal. I wish those darn kids would just play quietly without supervision and let me create material evidence of my good parenting!

Anyway, on to the bag...

Em was pretty happy
(also impatient for me to snap the picture so she could get to work filling the bag).

Here she is transferring the treasures.

The collection in all its glory. Yeah, we might ask her to keep this outside.

And the little bag itself. I kind of like it. I used leftover denim from Joseph's Luigi costume and fabric from my stash (the lining is an old bed sheet). I only had to buy the interfacing, which cost about $1.90. I might add a magnetic closure next time. Also, for any child bigger than Emily I would lengthen the strap, because it looks a little purse-like with the shorter strap.

Now our girl can really collect!