My Hawaiian Themed quilted tote bag

The day my husband bought me the beautiful sewing cabinet I also picked up a couple of pattern books (but I'm only going to talk about one of them right now). "Quilted Bags and Totes" by Denise Clason - what a fantastic book! I'm an organizing junkie and tote bags are one of my all time FAVORITE things. My Motto "a place for everything and everything in it's place". So once I saw this book I thought to myself- "how fantastic". This pattern is the first one in the book and I feel head over heels in love with it! This is also the pattern of tote bag that I'm going to make for my m-i-l to use as her knitting tote :-)


Here it is without handles. I went to bed early last night after completing the outer shell. I woke up in the middle of the night from a horrible nightmare and could not get back to sleep. So I started working on the lining. I cut the fabric, pinned, sewed, ironed and ironed some more and sewed some more. I cut and made binding for the top edge, sewed it on and then did the finishing edge with hand sewing.
Here is the lining with pockets. I changed the pocket sizes from the ones used in the pattern as I'm giving this to my girlfriend to use as a diaper bag.
And this is it...the finished product!