I finished this quilter’s tote, the one and only Junior Billie Bag, last month and plum forgot to post pictures. Better late than never!

The bag, a scaled down version of the original tote designed by Billie Mahorney, measures 14″ across, 17″ high, and 7½” deep. You’ll notice the bag is wide enough for a 6½” x 24″ ruler. That’s my favorite feature of Billie’s wonderful design because it’s an awkward size ruler to carry around.

Here’s a look from the other side:

Every time I make a Junior Billie Bag (or JBB, as I like to call it) I have a lot of fun picking out fabrics and deciding what 12″ blocks to incorporate on the front and back panels. The inset circle shown in the first photo is a favorite design; this one was made from an octagonal kaleidoscope block. A more recent favorite is the windmill block shown above. I fussycut the bloom in the center into a square and added a ¼” strip around it.

Take a peek inside the bag, where you can see layers of pockets on all four sides:

Flat items like file folders, books, and patterns fit nicely in the larger pockets, and the smaller pockets hold a plethora of smaller items. There are outside pockets, too. All told, this Junior Billie Bag has somewhere around two dozen pockets. Anything too big too fit into a pocket can go in the center of the bag.

This JBB bag is currently hanging as a class sample in Montavilla Sewing Center‘s Lake Oswego store. In February and March I will teach a three-part workshop so experienced quilters can make their own versions. (Incidentally, in January I will teach a class called “Going in Circles” that highlights the no-pin freezer paper method of making inset circles, a variation of Dale Fleming’s method. More on both classes here.)

After the class is over I’ll have the pleasure of giving the JBB to a very dear friend.

This JBB is the eighth one I have made. If you’d like to see the first seven bags, you’ll find them here.