This story starts out kinda funny. I had been following Lysa Flower on Instagram for a while, and realized she must live close to me after she posted some pictures to local events. I can’t remember how it came out for sure, but after a couple messages back and forth, we discovered we actually live in the same town! How cool is that?! Lysa is as cool in real life as you imagine she might be from her Instagram feed. Lysa was going to the Spring Quilt Market and had some projects on the go and when she asked me to make this bag with her Cassette pattern and Kimberly Kight’s Snap to Grid fabric, I simply couldn’t turn it down. 

I was a little nervous to dive right in since I didn’t have a ton of paper piecing experience. I made this practice one using Libs Elliott’s Tattooed collection and omitted the piping. I also only put the cassette on one side since this was just practice and time was ticking. You may have noticed I did in fact make some mistakes on this one: my seam allowance was a little too small in the top left and you can see my stitching, and I didn’t use a separate colour for the center of the “cassette.” Phew! I was glad to learn those mistakes on my practice! I also tried to place tabs for the strap at the seam for the zipper panel, but that made it very difficult to do the drop in lining at the end, not impossible, just verrrry difficult. 

The Snap to Grid collection is so much fun! If it reminds you of the 80’s, that’s because it’s meant to! It’ll have you wearing side ponies and stirrup pants (or at least reminiscing about them). Lysa wanted the whole bag to be like a 3D cassette tape, not just on the front, so we adapted both the Sew Sweetness Polaris bag and Lysa’s Cassette Tape pattern to make it happen. 

​Cotton + Steel has such fun selvages and I was so glad this project has the perfect place for them.

For the Exterior Bottom Panel, I used the Large cassette bottom pattern piece and extended the lines to match the width of the bag pattern. Then I added matching fabric to make up the rest of the panel.

Once I completed all the paper piecing, assembling the bag was identical to the instructions in the pattern.

The inside of this bag is just as cheerful as the outside, isn’t it? 

You can read about the rest of Lysa’s Market projects and collaboration with Kimberly Kight over on her site, and sign up for her newsletter while you’re there!