Knitted bag pattern Part 1

I needed a new knitting project, I need a new handbag (the strap attachment fell off and it keeps trying to eat any knitted tops I'm wearing) and I also need to use up some of the wool in my stash (otherwise I'll not be able to buy more!)  I had five balls of Lincraft's Prism yarn in blue and beige.  It has a very slow colour change that I like- I much prefer large lengths in a colour that gently changes than wool that is constantly changing as I prefer the way it knits up.

I had a free pattern from Lincraft for a bag using the yarn but decided to tweak it a bit lot, so here's my altered version.  Warning in advance- this has ended up being quite long so I will split it into two posts- inside and outside!  I also talk a lot about different customisation options so you might want to read through the entire post before you cast on.

Front
Cast on 48 stitches.  Knit in stocking stitch for 17 rows, then knit two rows of reverse stocking.  Repeat these 19 rows, then knit 17 stitches of stocking stitch and cast off.

Back and flap
Cast on 48 stitches.  Knit in stocking stitch for 17 rows, then knit two rows of reverse stocking.  Repeat these 19 rows twice more.   At this point you should have 3 reverse stocking stitch lines ending with the two reverse stocking rows and this back should be the same size as the front piece.

To make the top and flap continue knitting as follows:
Row 1: K2, purl to last 2, K2
Row 2: K all
These two rows repeated will make the front flap in stocking stitch with a garter stitch band on either side to stop curling.  Continue for the size you wish for your flap (include an extra 8cm or so to the length to allow for the distance the flap covers to go from the top over to the front- the top bit in other words). When you nearly reach the size of the flap that you wish ending with a knit row (mine was 21 cm from the last reverse stocking rows), shape as follows for the final rows:

Row 1:  K2, P2 tog, P to last 4, P2togtbl, K2
Row 2: Knit all
Row 3: K2, ssk, ssk, K to last 4, K2 tog, K2
Row 4: Repeat Row 3

Cast off

The garter stitch edging should help the material curl up at all, but you will still probably find you need to block the material to make it lie flat.  In addition, you can line your bag including the flap to help it hold its shape- more on that in a future post.

Sides (make 2)
Cast on 12 stitches.  Knit in stocking stitch until the length of the side is the length of the front MINUS half the width of the side.  So if your front piece was 25 cm and your side was 8 cm wide like my test bag, you want to make your side 21 cm long.
NOTE- if you want to have a bag handle as part of the side, read the notes below first!

Checking the size of the bag side- this is about the right length.  The knitting needle on the right shows the seam point for the bottom of the bag.

Strap
Option 1- Garter stitch
There are several options for bag straps.  Many knitted bags I've seen use garter stitch straps.  On the plus side, these will match your bag exactly since they are, of course, made from the same material.  On the minus side, they tend to stretch, particularly if you load up your bag the way that I do mine.  If you go this option, make your strap shorter than you want it to be to take this stretch into account.

If you have more self control in bag packing than me, then you may wish to make the sides and the strap all in one piece.  If so, just switch to garter stitch when one side is the required length, then stitch for the length of your strap (don't forget the stretch factor) before switching back to stocking for the other side.

Option 2- Icord or other cord options
Icord is another option (tons of tutorials out there online so I'll let you find one yourself).  It can either be knitted on double pointed needles or using a Knitting Nancy (anyone else have one as a kid?  I had two, one of which was my mothers from when she was a kid!).  A similar sort of cord can be made using a lucet which is a bit like a primitive ancestor of a Knitting Nancy.  Yonks ago I wrote a review of a lucet... I must dig it out and post it here

Option 3- Something else
The final option is to use some other material entirely for the bag strap.  Since there is quite a lot in the world that is is 'something else' I shall leave it to you to investigate this option

Assembly
Smart people block pieces before sewing them up.  Thanks to a combination of impatience and absent-mindedness I didn't do this, so please forgive the curly nature of the pieces in the photos below.

Sew the bottom of the front and back piece together (while you could choose to knit this as one piece, using a seam should make the bottom stronger and avoid sagging when loaded up with stuff). 

Bottom and top sewn together  and the first side in progress (the knitting needle shows the location of the bottom seam)

Sew the side panels to the front and back.  I found it best to start an the bottom of the side piece (so at the seam of the front and back) and sew up to ensure things are even.  When sewn on, the side piece should the just the right height to reach the top of the front, and to the last reverse stocking section of the back.

Sew the bottom of the side pieces on first, centred over the bottom seam

 When finished your bag should look a bit like this, or uncurly if you were good and actually blocked the pieces first!

If you didn't block it, now would be a good time.  Dampen the wool (or soak it- just bear in mind it will take much longer to dry) and pin it to shape on a suitable flat surface.  I like to use a beach towel over a cheap yoga mat because I can lay it out anywhere I like.  Once dry, the material should not curl up like it's trying to hide!

Next step is to attach the strap to the bag.  I am using some large rings I bought from the craft shop.  These will be sewn to the top of each side piece and the strap will then be attached to the rings. If you want a simple bag, you can do this step now, add your strap and call it good.

However, I am going to do something sneaky.  I am making a fitted organiser to go with this bag.  It will have pockets to hold things that otherwise disappear such as my mobile phone, and will also sneakily attach to the rings to prevent the bag from sagging out of shape too much.  Because of this, I am going to leave the rings for another post.  Trust me, it will make more sense in the end.

Click here to go straight to part 2

Tatted necklace

Long time, no blog! Blame it on a combination of starting a new job and all that stress it involves and the joy of moving- nothing saps creative energy like unpacking boxes and putting together flatpack furniture.  Which is a pity really, because I've always thought of flatpack furniture as the grown-up version of a giant lego kit!

I only have a small post- a cute little necklace that I made on the weekend before starting my new job as a teacher.  Things will probably remain fairly quiet from me as things I do in the classroom like using osmosis to shrink and expand eggs don't really fit in a craft blog (fun though- dissolve an egg in vinegar over a day or two, then place it in either pure water or a highly concentrated sugar or salt solution and see what happens).

Close up view of necklace

Necklace pinned out for blocking- curve at end due to me running out of cork board!

The necklace was from the book 'Easy Tatting' by Rozella F. Linden and was made using purple crochet cotton and black swarovski crystals.  I think it looks pretty good, can't wait to wear it out and about.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone!  Hope 2012 is a good one for you all.  Things have slowed down here on the crafting front in anticipation of my big move (8 days to go).  Because I've been starting to pack, that means about half my craft stuff is packed away.  I only have a few projects out (tricky since trying to decide what projects can be packed up and what should stay out until the last minute changes based on mood).

One thing I have managed to do is finish Queen Anne's Curse.  I had thought the curse would be over once I cast off, and I'd managed to catch a few stitches on the last few rounds that inexplicably jumped off the needles to sit, lurking, waiting for the moment to run away, giggling evilly.  I finished the last stitch on Christmas day and could finally spread out my work to happily gloat over.

Queen Anne's Curse, still with the life lines in

But then I pulled out the two lifelines that kept it in a sort of blobby mass.  Spreading it out for the first time I looked in horror....

The ruddy thing is way too small!  I was expecting it to be much bigger for some reason.  It is about 84 cm in diameter laid out on my bed.  And given it is made of cotton, I'm not sure if it will stretch at all by washing and blocking it (if anything, the cotton might shrink- eek!)

And if that wasn't enough, clearly one of the balls of cotton I used, despite being the same brand, dye (well, white) and type, clearly had a different colour/ thickness? than the rest.  That ring around the half way point is not a design feature- well it wasn't originally, it is now!

It is now packed it a bag to await my big move before I even think about trying to block it   Still, that was 2011.  Onward to 2012, where nothing can possibly go wrong.  Right?  Right?!

Dressing up Barbie

Christmas is coming (I'll pause to allow those who have not realised it yet to gasp in shock) and that means finding presents for my family.  Today's post covers the present for my three year old niece who can't read or search the internet yet, thus making it safe for me to post about.

Given that my knitting addiction shows no signs of abating I thought I'd make some more clothes for Barbie.  Partly to feed my crafting addiction and partly because it seems hard to even find clothes in the shops- it is a tad excessive to need to buy a whole new doll every time you want to get a new costume!

So I searched Ravelry and found a magnificent site for knitting Barbie patterns: Sticka till Barbie.  There are hundreds of different patterns there!  Using some left over sock yarn I had, I quickly whipped up a little coat and a little hat (#88 and #A40 respectively if you are looking for the pattern).
  

Then yesterday I was prowling in a little local craft shop that I had not visited before and found some lovely sparkly fingering yarn (Peter Pan Washable Goldfingering).  It was just cheap enough that I found myself justifying my purchase.  I ended up choosing pattern #984, Green Long Gown to make.

Due to the amount of yarn I had though (about 100m on the ball) I ended up having to modify the pattern a bit.  While the original was for a floor length gown, I had to make a shorter skirt.  To make the edge of the skirt more interesting I also used a picot bind off.  Attempt one though was going to need a bit more yarn than I had (I was about 20 stitches away from finishing when I ran out and needed to go back and pick up 180+ stitches- d'oh!).  I decreased the number of picots and all was well (I cast on 2, bound off 6 and repeated this pattern right the way through).

Here is one of my old Barbie dolls testing out the dress (two photos, one without flash, one with because the detail shows better without but the colour is truer with flash).   It is now wrapped up, ready for Christmas day and I can now get back to knitting my Queen Anne's curse (I've nearly finished Chart 3).

A special swamp dragon for your Hogswatch tree

For those who are not familiar to Discworld you have two choices- go away and read all the wonderfully funny Terry Pratchett books you can get your hands on, or just skip to the part where I talk about making a pom-pom dragon and ignore the weird references to explosions and the Hogfather.

For everyone else, this is a little project that I wrote up for my Hogswatch card recipients this year (I wanted to send the supplies to go with it but sadly this would've made my envelopes too large to be sent as letters, let alone cards, and postage is expensive enough to the other side of the world without making parcels.  So they, like you, will have to scrounge up some supplies to work with.  As you will see though, this is not particulary hard- pom-poms can be made, pipe cleaners are necessary and glue, felt and googly eyes are fun to buy and not expensive.

This project is to make a little swamp dragon to hang on your tree- or a bunch of them, stitting in the tree, flaming softly, inadvertently exploding when the crackers are pulled, drooling and disolving the presents underneath...  it wouldn't be Hogswatch without them*!




Pom-Pom Swamp Dragon
Materials needed

• 1 Large pompom
• 1 Medium pompom
• 3 or 5 Small pompoms
• Pipe cleaner
• Felt
• 2 Googly eyes
• Glue
• Scissors
• String

1. Glue the small pompom for the dragon snout to the medium pompom (the head). Glue this head to the large pompom for the body. Glue the googly eyes onto the head.

Glue small pom-pom to medium for snout and googly eyes above this to make the head.

2. Cut your pipe cleaner to 12 cm in length and bend into a M shape. Use two shorter lengths of pipe cleaner wrapped around the two top corners of the M to make the wing supports for each wing (see picture)

Step 2 and 3- Pipe cleaner and felt guide

3. Cut the felt to the shape of your wings. Glue the felt to the wings, then glue the wings to the body.


4. Cut a long triangle of felt for the tail. Cut a short length of pipe cleaner and glue to the tail felt. Glue this to the back for your swamp dragon tail.

5. Glue the remaining small pompoms for the legs of the dragon. You can also glue another two for the arms but I ran out of pompoms!

Awe, how could you not want to make this little guy?

Tie a short length of string around the body so you can hang up your Hogswatch decoration! And leave a comment or send me a picture if you make one.  I'd love to see!



* Swamp dragons on trees are not part of official Discworld cannon.  But they would be brilliant, don't you think?  I mean it's not that far in terms of insanity to the Victorian tradition of the tree filled with burning candles, right?