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(Almost.)
The bag I started nearly a year ago sat around in pieces after I got it blocked in January. I finally got organized enough to trace the pieces for the lining and construct the bag about a month ago.
Finally finished!
(The alert reader will notice the difference between the flap now that the duplicate stitch work is done and the flap when I last posted about this project.)
I suppose it isn’t surprising that I waited. I had to fuss with the lining, adjusting until it fit, and it took a while to get it all worked out. I did manage to add in some pockets for small tools, including my beloved stitch and needle gauge. I used a heavy interfacing to give the bag some body, which worked, although I would have been happier if I’d used fusible interfacing. Then I could have stuck the lining to the interfacing and gotten a cleaner finish.
Already in service...
The only thing it still needs is clasp to hold it together. My friend Deb has suggested Norwegian pewter clasps. While they are beautiful, I think I’d rather just use some hook and eye closures so that the claps are invisible. The front of the bag seems complicated enough without adding more stuff to it.
It only took me 9 months to get from knitted to constructed. Any bets on how long it takes me to get the closure put on the flap? If I could, I’d go without one, but when you pick the bag up by the strap, the whole things sags and the flap pops up, making it easy for the yarn to jump out and escape.
Watch this space for reports on other knitting projects I’ve been playing with lately.
I’ve actually already finished the flap completely and have blocked the pieces. However, the camera is in the shop, so I can only show part of the progress I’ve made.
After cutting the front and back apart (by cutting through the steek), I picked up the flap stitches on the back half and then knitted the flap using intarsia, which is a different color knitting technique than the other parts of the bag required. You can see the difference from the wrong side of this piece.
The blue and purple part has the yarn running all the way across the stitches in the back, which is necessary, because the two colors in any one row are used constantly. This type of stranded color work is also known as Fair Isle knitting. The pink and blue part has large areas of a single color, so a single strand of yarn is worked for a single motif (i.e., one strand of blue for each separate rose), which is intarsia. Both techniques require counting and careful yarn management, but I think it is worth the extra effort to have more color in the piece.
The next step, which I will post when I have a picture of it, uses duplicate stitch, which is actually embroidery rather than knitting.
This Christmas I received a handmade gift from my friend Kelleen. You may remember that together we took on a pincushion project last spring that I despaired of ever finishing. It included tiny counted cross-stitch on linen that I thought was going to make me go blind. I did eventually complete the project. How I laughed when I opened my present and saw that my friend had tackled this challenging pattern once again, this time to make me a sewing box that matches my pincushion!
My new sewing box with crazy-making tiny cross-stitch on the lid.
The box after it is opened up - lots of places to put things
Kelleen actually made the cord that draws the sides together when you close the box, and she says that turned out to be the most time-consuming part of the project. She got me the perfect present: something I love having that I would never have made myself. Thanks, Kelleen!
One of the surprises of organizing my studio was finding a bunch of finished cross-stitch projects from years long past. I didn’t pay much attention at the time; I was too busy sorting and storing to even look in the bags I found. But they all wound up in a bin together, so when I started decorating for Christmas and remembered seeing a kit for Christmas ornaments, I knew right where to find it.
It occurred to me that I might have finished the cross-stitching but not assembled the ornaments, and when I opened the bag, that was what I found – six lovely little angels all stitched up, waiting for their ribbon and lace. I made these so long ago that I don’t even remember making them anymore, and I had to wonder why I had put in all that time and then not completed the project when there was so little left to do.
I found out quickly that in fact there was a lot left to do. Not only did the angels need to be glued to cardboard, but they had two separate trims (piping and lace) and felt backings, all of which got glued on in separate stages. It took me a full day, including drying time, to put these together, but they are on my tree at last.
All six of the angels from the kit
For the first time ever, Inspire Me Thursday’s theme (owl) sparked an immediate image. I saw owl eyes made out of sunflowers, and I was off. Made of fabric, ribbon, felt, and thread. I had fun with the machine embroidery.
