The Rose MacClare Batik Fabric Knit Bag

Recently, I cut my batik and hand dyed fabric scraps into 1/2" wide strips (on the straight of grain). I blogged about that here. Then I spent hours and hours and days and days knotting those strips together to create a huge ball of yarn. I knotted fabric strips together while I binge-watched all 3 dvds of season 4 Downton Abbey and still I had only knotted about two-thirds of the fabric scraps. I watched other dvds too while I continued to knot the scraps together. Finally I had a huge ball of fabric yarn made. Since most of the yarn was made while watching Downton Abbey, I thought perhaps I should name the bag I knit after one of the characters. Since the batik fabrics are bright and kind of wild, the character I thought of, of course, was Lady Rose MacClare. So I named this bag that I knit The Rose MacClare Bag. Rose doesn't like to be called "lady" as you know. I couldn't just name it Rose because you might think I named it after the flower or the color and there are certainly more colors in this bag than just rose.

I used batiks because they do not unravel as much as other fabrics do and the color is the same on both the front and back of the fabric too.

I wanted to line this bag and when I made the lining it came out a bit too small width-wise. So I suppose now I will have to make another bag that will fit the lining, lol!!! I will try and measure the lining fabric correctly so that I will be able to line this bag too.

This is the other side of the bag. As you can see it has a variegated look because I had soooo many scraps! I knit i-cord handles.

I even had enough batik yarn leftover that I knit a small purse-style bag. I need to finish it and I will post it when it's done. I really like how this bag came out and what a great scrap-busting project it is too.

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Another Arm Knit Cowl

I knit another cowl with the arm knitting method. This one I cast on 6 stitches instead of 10 that I did for my first arm knit cowl. I used a skein of yarn I already had for this one.

Oh you can see a bit of snow at the top of the cowl.

Close view.

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Sewist Interview at Chris W Designs

I am being interviewed today by Christine over at Chris W Designs. If you are dying to know more about me (lol!!!) hop on over and check out the interview. You can leave a comment here or there if you would like to.
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My Newest Bag~The Fiesta Bag

I checked out a book from the library with a lot of cute bags in it. The book is called Sewing Pretty Little Things: How to Make Small Bags and Clutches From Fabric Remnants. (The link is to Amazon and not my local library, lol!!) I loved nearly all the bags in this book. But my favorite bag is the one I made here. I will tell you that you probably need some bag making experience to use this book because in order to change things like adding or substituting elements you need to know how to do that. I found some of the instructions for making this bag to be rather vague or incomplete, so if you have never made more than a simple tote bag, you might have trouble figuring out some of the steps.

 I love how my bag turned out and I will be making this one again and making more changes as well. I like using more than one fabric too. The fabrics I used for this bag are fun and bright, so I am calling it The Fiesta Bag. I used some fat quarters and the main fabric I had 1/2 yard of and then found this cute novelty fabric for the lining and the colors worked perfectly together. I used fabrics up from my stash to make this one. I am keeping this bag for myself to use too.

My Fiesta Bag! (in the book it's called the Working Girl's Shoulder Bag, too boring of a name for my bag though, lol!!!) Oh by the way that white stuff on the fence is snow.

I wanted to use a magnetic snap for the flap, but I had to use Velcro. If I had used the snap I wouldn't have been able to sew the top flap to the bottom flap because the snap would have been in the way. I may change the design a bit on the next one of these I make to accommodate a snap instead.

The back of the bag has a zipper pocket.

My zipper pull of course.

All my crap , uh belongings inside the bag. The book showed a leather strap with a hook and ring so that you can hook it together to cinch in the side of the bag. The book shows how the bag looks with and without it being hooked. But after making this I felt I really didn't need to hook it. So for now I am using the hook to hook my keys on and I will rip out the strap on the right with the ring.

The next day I decided I would make a matching wallet with whatever fabrics I had leftover from making the bag. After making changes to the bag and doing that rather well, for some reason my brain misread a cutting measurement for this wallet and then that caused me to place one side of the magnetic snap off center! Luckily I caught it in time to put the other side of the magnetic snap off center too so that it would at least work. I guess we all have our off days, huh? 

Even with my goofs, this wallet turned out nice enough for me to use. I will be making some more of these too. My blog friend Maria has made tons of  wallets  and her sewing skills put me to shame :0{ Of course she has perfected these wallets because she has sewn dozens of them!!! 

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Knit Can Cozy

I knit a cover for a large can. I used a black worsted weight yarn along with a ladder or railroad track type of yarn held together.

I have made quilted can cozies before, but I wanted to knit one this time.

I used a black yarn and a rainbow colored ladder yarn held together. Up close this yarn looks more like charcoal, but it is really black.

I cut a hole in the plastic lid so that I could use it as a yarn holder to while I knit.

Put a ball or skein of yarn into the can...

...snap the lid in place and now the ball of yarn won't roll around the floor as I knit.

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Butterfly Sling Purse

As part of the Bag-a-Month Club I received the pattern for the Butterfly Sling Purse, designed by Janelle of Emmaline Bags. I finished making this bag on Sunday. This bag is like carrying a wallet that is also a bag. Lots of credit card pockets, a zippered pocket that fits cash perfectly, a slip pocket and zippers that keep the credit card pockets closed, plus magnetic snaps to open and close the whole thing too. There's an adjustable strap so you can wear it across your body. Very handy little bag for a woman-on-the-go who needs to bring essentials only with her, like cash and credit cards, library cards, etc. Here is my version of the bag~

I  had some light colored denim that has silver glitter dots all over it, so I decided to use this fabric to make this bag.

I didn't have a twist-lock that the pattern called for so I used a magnetic snap to close the bag and added a pink butterfly button as decoration on the outside. The butterfly button goes along with the bag name and the lining fabric which you will see in the photos that follow.

Looking down into the bag you can see those 2 zippered tops which when opened...

...are the credit card pockets. There are 6 credit card pockets in this zippered section and...

...6 credit card pockets in the other zippered section too, for a total of 12 credit card pockets! See the pink butterfly fabric that I chose as the lining fabric also goes along with the butterfly name of the bag and the butterfly button I sewed to the outside of the bag flap.

This pocket inside fits cash just perfectly. I had the cash inside the pocket, but it was hard to photograph so that you could see it.

When you unsnap the bag it opens up flat like this. Just make sure that you do not have anything in that large slip pocket if you open it like this or it will come tumbling out, lol!!!

This is how the back of the bag looks.

If you know me, my bags are not complete unless I make zipper pulls for the zippers. I made the 2 tops zippers pulls like this one. And if you noticed the pocket that holds the cash has a pink center bead with 2 blue beads like this one but colors are opposite placement. 

If you love this bag and would like to own it, I have it listed for sale in my Zibbet Store. If you want to make this bag yourself you can join the Bag-of-the-Month Club and make your own Butterfly Sling Purse.
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Batik Scraps and a New Project

I am probably crazy for cutting up 100's (or is it thousands?) of batik scraps into 1/2" wide strips, but I have an idea and I wanted to start by using my scraps rather cutting up perfectly good batik yardage (in case this idea doesn't work out as planned). Plus I want a scrappy and colorful look for this hair brain I mean brilliant idea! Okay it all started when I was reading a blog I follow called Made by Me in Red. Marcy had knit a couple of bags made out of batik strips. That of course got me thinking. I have a book about knitting with fabric strips, so I took it out and as I was looking at the book, the wheels started churning and I thought I could cut up that huge bag of batik and hand dyed fabric scraps that I have into 1/2-inch strips and use those to create the yarn I needed to knit a bag. I am not sure what bag style I will knit, but this will be a great way to use up those batik scraps and if it comes out great and if I want to make another knit bag, I might save myself a lot of time and cut up batik yardage. But if it doesn't work out the way I plan, then I will have invested only my labor. After all I will continue to acquire fabric scraps with my quilt making and other bag making projects anyway and this could be a great way to use up some of those scraps. This is going to take me quite a while to slit-knot all these strips together to create a huge ball of yarn, but the knitting should go quickly. I hope to line the bag with some pockets as well. But for now at least the strips are cut.

My basket is overflowing with 1/2" wide batik strips of all different lengths.

This will make a very colorful bag...if I ever get all the strips slit-knotted together into one huge ball of yarn. See what you started Marcy? Lol!!!

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