In September, I visited the NW Quilting Expo in Portland. I found some gorgeous turtle batik fabric that I just knew I needed to have!!! The vendor for the turtle batik is Quilt Passions and you can buy the fabric online.

While continuing to browse the expo, I came across another vendor who had a bunch of cute bag patterns that only require 6 fat quarters and some fusible fleece to make. After pondering the bag patterns, I selected the Half Moon Bay one because I thought I could modify it to use my turtle batik fabric.

Honu Batik Fabric and Bag Pattern

This past week, I had the chance to make the bag. I fussy-cut the larger squares in the pattern to feature a turtle from the batik print. I also used a lovely batik that looked like water for the background and handles. The accent fabrics are a dark blue batik, a dark green print batik with a slight turtle pattern, and a light green batik.

As accent items, I purchased some little honu (turtle) charms cut from koa wood from Etsy. I hand sewed 1 honu charm to each light green batik squre and sewed additional charms along the top portion of the finished bag.

Honu Charms from Koa Wood

Here are some pics of the completed project:

Completed Little Honu Bag (Inside)

Completed Little Honu Bag

Since I did modify the pattern a bit, I used more than 1 fat quarter of the turtle batik fabric to fuzzy cut the squares and to use it for my lining. I used 2 fat quarters of the batik water print, 2 fat quarters of the dark blue batik, and portions of 1 fat quarter each of the dark green batik and light green batik.

This little honu bag brings a smile to my face!

Enjoy!
~Jennifer~