Blue crochet bag

Having finished my beautiful Kiri, and found a lovely dress to wear to my friend's wedding a couple of weekends ago, I was almost sorted. Problem was, I didn't have a bag to complete the outfit. I'm the kind of person who likes everything to match, so that was a distinct issue for me... I trawled Oxford Street in search of a suitable bag, but to no avial, at which point I decided I'd have to make my own. Easy, right?



I popped into Liberty and picked up a few balls of Rowan Handknit Cotton and half a metre of fabric for linin (I think it is a Kaffe Fassett/Rowan print), with a vague picture in mind of a shell crochet bag with stripes of colour. After a couple of redesigns and a quick bit of work on the sewing machine, I came up with this:



































(Please excuse the bad quality pictures, I'll take some decent ones with my camera soon, these are from my phone!)


The bag design is my own, and the flowers from Stitch 'n Bitch Crochet

and The Encyclopedia of Crochet Techniques. The lining contains a couple of pockets for my oyster card and mobile phone, and plenty of room for a purse and other assorted junk (aka things that might come in handy...)

All in all, it took about 2 weeks to complete (I was a bit too relaxed about it to begin with, and could have worked much faster, so in the end I was sewing the lining in on the morning of the wedding!) and less than half of the 4 balls of yarn I bought, so there's plenty left over for another project. Plus plenty of fabric, but I have plans for that...