Custom made suitcases

this year for christmas, i decided i wanted to make the gifts for the three young children in the family. i found this super adorable and fun pattern for children's suitcases by sewfearless.com. this is probably the most complicated sewing project i've ever taken on, and i was going to be making three of them. i wanted to take my time with them so i started early in the calendar year. first, i designed custom fabric for each of the three kids in different colors. alex's favorite color is green, so that was an obvious choice, and then since the other two are too young to have a favorite color yet, i went with pink and blue. it was a long process in sewing the suitcases, and i had to redo the zipper parts several times. of course, i had the wrong style zippers at first, so i had to trash the first try, buy new zippers and recut some pieces and try again. i still had to resew the zipper several times to get it right. other than that, all the other sixty something steps went fairly well as long as i took my time. i barely finished them in time, but they turned out fabulous. they have a vintage feel to them, with little elasticized pockets on the inside and accent handles and corner patches on the outside with coordinating zippers. along with the suitcases, i made each child their own ragdoll that was designed and illustrated by me. abbey got a girl ragdoll with reversible dress, carter got a super ted with reversible cape, and alex got a detective fox with reversible capelet. you can find any of these ragdolls as cut and sew fabric on spoonflower in my shop http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/kfay
alex loves her suitcase and fox ragdoll; she wants me to make her all three ragdolls and i expect her to fill her suitcase with doll clothes and accessories or squinkies - we shall see.