Milk & Honey Alice Backpack

When I saw Elea Lutz’s new Milk & Honey collection I knew I had to make something for my girls with it! I went back and forth with ideas but finally settled on new Alice backpacks for them to carry their things in – their old ones are the small size and they’ve gotten a little too small.

The sweet florals, bows, bunnies, strawberries, and colors made this the perfect spring addition to their wardrobe, and I hadn’t even had a chance to take photos and my daughter had already loaded it up for our errands yesterday. (You might notice that there is only one backpack in these photos, the other is still in progress!)

After my recent post on color value, I really appreciated that this fabric had a range of color value while still being light and bright. I love how the deeper pinks and mustard colors bright so much life to the project!

I always snap a photo of my layout before I sew my patchwork, it definitely helps keep things on track when sewing the squares. This is the layout for my other daughter’s backpack, I just need to finish assembling the pieces.

The pocket of the Alice backpack isn’t patchwork in the pattern, but I really wanted to use more than just a couple prints for this project, and I love how it turned out. I always quilt my patchwork, so this time I fused some Pellon Shape-Flex to the back of the patchwork piece and added some wavy quilting lines. I used squares that brought the piece close to the pattern size and then just slightly adjusted the width of the bag (you may notice this pocket is also a hair taller than the usual one).

I used the blue from the drawstring sleeves for the back to add some more variety to the prints, and because it was too cute not to use.

We have been having such a lovely, mild winter in Virginia that it already is starting to feel like spring, so I’m especially loving the spring colors!