OhSewCrafty Blog

I volunteered to donate a prize for the raffle drawing at the conclusion of “WIPs to finish by the end of 2010” KAL with some members of the SKC.  The challenge was a great success, with about 30 projects completed, either UFO’s or stashbusters.  Seven knitters won prizes!  I decided to sew up a small project bag as a prize, I went to my designated winner’s project page on Ravelry and observed that she likes jewel tones.  So I went to Joann and got some purple fabric.  I followed an excellent tutorial by Stacy Sews, available here.  The tutorial was well written and easy to follow even for a novice bag-maker like myself, though I did have a few moments where I had to “think in three dimensions”.  The bag employed two fat quarters, a mid-heavyweight interfacing as stabilizer, plus a zipper.  Note: cutting, alignment, etc is really critical if you want your bag to have square edges; I used an omigrid ruler to make it easy.  After finishing the bag, I pressed all the folded edges to get a nice box shape, which holds well since I used a heavy interfacing.  It was a really fun project and I wouldn’t mind doing it again. 

And what about my own WIP challenge?  At the beginning, I set out goals to finish four projects: the Sage cardigan, Phildar boucle pullover, Selbu Modern hat, and Aeolian shawl.  Selbu modern was the first done, only a week after the challenge started on October 10th.  By October 12th, the crochet finishing was done on the Phildar boucle pullover, but I lagged on seaming.  Sage followed along presently on October 13th.  Aeolian took a bit more effort, but I kept at it and finished on October 27th.   So 3/4 isn’t bad, I suppose. 

One more photo of the box bag- I love the shape of this thing and strap drapes nicely over one’s wrist.  The size is just perfect for a small project or notions- about 10″ long, 5.5″ wide, and 2.5″ tall.