November 2020 Photo Contest Winners Pt. 2

12/10/2020 2507 2 1

November 2020 Photo Contest Winners Pt. 2


Angie's story was a thrill to read and very detailed. We don't want you to miss out on reading her experience, so we've compiled it here in Pt.2 of November's Winners! If you missed Pt. 1, you can read it HERE.

Take a look at the winners this month, and don’t forget to look at all of the submissions in our Customer Photo Gallery HERE!

To learn more about what it takes to win, be sure to check out our blog on the contest details.

If you’re looking to submit to the next monthly photo contest, VISIT THIS PAGE to submit your photos.

Want to see the rules and submission guidelines? VISIT THIS PAGE.

You can also search through all of the Winning Submissions here.

Let’s see the winners!



It was love at first sight when it came to the Divide and Conquer pattern. The moment I saw the Intro video, I knew it was the solution to my laptop bag woes. You see, I use a giant 17″ laptop for my photography and digital art. It’s really tough to find cases and bags in that size, and when you do, the selection is slim and none of them are cute. Enter Divide and Conquer!

I did my measurements, ordered the pattern, and when it arrived and I read the instructions, I was so intimidated, I stuck it in a drawer and said “someday when I’m a better sewist.” I wanted to get a couple more projects under my belt first.

Someday was October 2020. I gathered my supplies, ordered my fabric, and got to work.


LESSON #1: Don’t order panel fabric for a ByAnnie bag unless you really, really know what you’re doing.

I’ve never worked with panel-style fabric before. I didn’t realize the design would be rotated 90-degrees. It runs from selvedge to selvedge. That meant if I followed the cutting layout in the pattern, the design would run the wrong direction on my bag. (See pic 001.)


LESSON #2: If you order fabric online, pay close attention to the scale of the design.

I didn’t realize just how huge the flowers were going to be on that panel! It’s a stunning design, where the flowers become larger as you move down the fabric, but by the bottom, they’re giantnormous. So big, a single flower could take up the entire pocket of the bag front – and I was making the large sized bag!

SOLUTION: After staring at the fabric for a couple days, moving my rulers around, cutting pattern pieces out of Swedish tracing paper and doing a lot of talking to myself, I landed on a solution. I divided the fabric into thirds.


The top third, mostly dark blues representing the sky, would be used for the outer edges of the bag around the zipper closure. The middle third, containing the smallest of the flowers, would be used for the front and back exterior of the bag. And the bottom third, containing those gigantic flowers, would be used for the interior pockets and shoulder pad.

Now all I had to do was completely re-draft the cutting layout and quilt my fabric in these three horizontal strips, with lots of runs of short stitches.


The rest of the project went along well, with no further hiccups or incidents of me making things unnecessarily harder on myself.

There’s a few things I’ve learned to do as I work with ByAnnie patterns that seems to make them come together smoothly for me:

If the pattern lists 2 sizes and 2 sets of dimensions – like Divide and Conquer – I can get easily mixed up and grab the wrong number by mistake. It saves me a lot of time and trouble to take my working copy of the directions before I get started and scratch out all the numbers corresponding to the size I am NOT making.


There’s something satisfying about seeing all the pieces cut out and labeled before you start assembly!

But when the pattern has a lot of pieces, like this one, I can get easily scrambled. What I’ve started doing is then grouping the pieces by the section of the pattern instructions where it’s used.

Then when I’m ready to start section II, for example, I just grab that pile of pattern pieces – and I’m only sorting through eight pieces to find the one I need, rather than 40 or 50.

I sewed this over the course of two weeks. Each time I stopped sewing for the day, I had to mark the directions so I knew where I left off and would know where to pick up the next time I was in my studio.

Something as simple as an arrow pointing to the next step will do the trick.


These photos are shots of the bag assembly in progress. I made a point of taking pics as I went along in part to keep myself motivated. This was the most complex bag project I’d undertaken, and I didn’t want to get discouraged – seeing how far I’d come definitely helped me stay motivated and realize that I really could finish this thing.



And then it was done! I couldn’t believe it! So I grabbed my laptop, and slid it inside …


… and it was 1.5″ too big.

I was shocked.
And numb.
And shocked.
What the ever loving heck?

And that was when I realized that when I bought the pattern, I had my previous HP 17″ Z-book laptop. Remember when I said I put the pattern in a drawer and it sat for a while? Well, I got a new, upgraded HP 17″ Z-book laptop. And its case is about 2″ wider than my old one. And I never even thought about the need to re-measure.


After I threw a little temper tantrum, I decided to look at this as a lesson learned. I took the bag with me on a short trip to Santa Fe – without my laptop – and it traveled beautifully.

I immediately began sketching up the pattern changes to make a new Divide and Conquer that’s 2.5″ bigger in both width and height – 13.5″h x 18.5″w x 8.5″d – to fit my laptop.

But the very best part of this story? The silver lining? My mom was in need of a new laptop case, and her 15″ laptop fits in this bag!


Surprise Honorable Mention

WINNER: Lynne H.

ABOUT:Lynne Harris submitted a poem to go alongside her wonderful Take A Stand projects!

We were absolutely tickled to read it, and we're sure you will enjoy it too!

WHAT THEY WON: $15 coupon to use on ByAnnie.com.


Happy Stitching!

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