For the Dignified Assassin

 Dignity, with a bit of flash. My son's sai case was both easier and harder to do than my daughter's. There was a learning curve with hers, definitely, but there were a few challenges unique to this case with this design.

Let's start with the Sulky Holoshimmer metallic thread for the dragon design (Embroidery Library). I needed only three different colours, but the metallic thread didn't want to unspool evenly, so I had to slow the big machine down to half her speed and stand there with the spool in my hand, gently unwinding the thread bit by bit.

The runes are Elder Futhark (Urban Threads), with the phonetic values that best spell "DRAGON".

My son picked a gorgeous mottled silver on black fabric for the lining of his case. That it was also a stretch knit was immaterial to him. Kobudo Mom makes these things work. Free-motion quilting a stretchy lining meant stabilizing, so I laid it on top of a piece of tear-away stabilizer I use for embroidery. It puckered, here and there, but I'm not showing you where.

Because the embroidery design on the outside was so wide, I had to finish things differently for this case. I couldn't just slap it on the outside, so I stitched the handle loop to the wrong side of the lining.  And since handles have to be on the outside of the bag, I left two huge gaps on either side when I stitched and turned the lining and shell, then folded and topstitched them shut. I also have a 3/16" thick interfacing between shell and lining, to give the case its body, since its contents would make it sag. I did have a long enough zipper for this case, so there was no fussing with positioning and shortening two zippers. And there was no way to stitch the zipper into the lining, so I just laid it on top of the lining, and stitched that as close to the edge of the tape as possible. I didn't even have to pin!