Knitting Bag

As you may have guessed from my blog, I'm a bit passionate about crafting (and cooking...which is a craft of sorts...). Anyway, I love to do the occasional project that combines one or more of my crafting passions - and this was one of those projects.

The opportunity arose when a girlfriend asked me if I would teach her how to knit. Her brother is expecting his first child and she wanted to handknit a baby blanket for the new arrival. I love sharing my obsessions passions with other folks so I jumped on the opportunity to teach her this skill. I wanted to nurture this new hobby a little bit so I thought I would make her a knitting bag to hold her project, yarn, needles and accessories.

I found this fab fabric at the local sewing shop which was perfect for the bag. Those of you papercrafters who aren't sewers might be interested to note that patterned papers and fabrics often echo each other and there are many common designers who do both. The other day I was shopping in the local quilt shop which had some gorgeous little sock monkey fabric and down the street at the LSS they had the exact, same design in scrapbook paper! I find that the same trends seem to run through both industries. Anyway, short story long, the colours and designs out right now in the fabric world are wonderful.

The bag has several pockets designed for holding knitting needles and crochet hooks, a zippered pocket and a large outside pocket (perfect for your pattern). Its a good size for a small to medium size project but probably not quite big enough for a full size afghan/blanket.

I have a few knitting related stamps and I thought I would add them to the bag for a little fun. The patch is knitabella by Stamping Bella. You could stamp directly onto the fabric with a permanent ink but I stamped onto transfer sheet and ironed the image onto the fabric for this project (which is why its mirrored). I cheated a bit on this because I decided to add the patch after the bag was completed so I used HeatBond (a double sided, iron on fabric adhesive) to attach the patch to the front pocket rather than sew it on.

Overall, I'm very happy with how this turned out and I will definately be making more of these bags. I think with some adaptions to the pockets you could use these for a variety of hobbies/passtimes and change the front patch to suit. Let's see...I have bookwormabella, stampingbella, craftybella.... Ah, the possibilities are endless!

Supplies: Fabric (Henry Glass Fabrics), notions (thread, zipper, fusible web, cardboard base, Heatbond), transfer paper, stamp (Stamping Bella), ink (Palette).