This was written by Leslie for the Miss Matatabi Makers series.

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 Hi. It’s Leslie again. And this is my second project as part of the Miss Matatabi Makers. If you read about my first project you can probably guess what type I fabric I chose this time. Yep, more linen and cotton blends. You can never go wrong with them. Seriously. This series of fruit fabric from the Miss Matatabi shop is too adorable. My favourite is the pears with the blue background!

I love sewing for my little one. So I looked at my sewing board on Pinterest for ideas and decided to make a couple of simple backpacks. One for Anika and one for her cousin. So I let Ani choose her two favourite fruit fabrics – the red apples for her and the pears for my niece. I used this great tutorial from The Purl Bee and the backpacks were simple to sew and came together quite quickly.

I enjoy working collaboratively with my little gal when it comes to sewing things for her. She picked the awesome fabric as well as the cord for the straps. She was sold on the green cord and I tried to convince her to go for another colour. I am glad I didn’t have much luck because it was a good reminder that Letting her have her own voice is so important. And the combo ended up being quite cute.

I toyed with doing some patchwork on the front of the bag but decided against it. I like the fruit design and didn’t want to mess with it. Sometimes simple is best. This fabric is the perfect weight for a little project like this. I’m so glad I have some of this fabric leftover. I think I will make a couple more backpacks for birthday gifts.

There she is with her new backpack. It was bedtime and she was not happy about having to model for me. (The outtakes are pretty priceless!) Luckily the promise of ten chocolate chips went a long way.

See you next month!

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Thank you, Leslie! Connect with Leslie on instagram, pinterest, and flickr.