The Choices Bag

I know this bag isn't all that impressive, but today it was a fabulous project. Let me explain the reasoning behind this bag. I am a computer animation instructor and teach using the computer for my day job. The past few weeks I have been on vacation. Two of those weeks were true vacation away from home, visiting family. This past week I have been in uber-work mode, trying to finish everything for the new quarter next week.

This past week I have had so many ideas of things to make for myself and for my shop. But alas with the new quarter on Monday I have had no time to do so. And I'm still not done with all the work! I'm in the final stages of working on prep work for the students.

This afternoon I came up with some ideas for class projects where the student needs to be given something at random. I thought they could choose the topic from a bag. Before I used simple plastic grocery bags. But today I thought since my eyes were going crazy from the monitor and my hands were itching to play with fabric, I would make one!

This bag was extremely quick and easy, under 30 mins. I followed a simple pattern from Amy Butler's InStitches book. It's the pattern for her recipe card holder, but thought it would work perfectly for my task.

I think it says something when you start implementing craft into your day job!

Time to go back to the paying work.

**Update - 1/14/10**
The choices bag went to work this week and added a lot of confusion to the students. Just what I wanted! Giving out random numbers and random topics for them to research and/or create from worked very well. Students became engaged and participated in classes with each other. Will definitely continue it in future classes!