Project Bag

Welcome to the next exciting installment of CraftyCripple's Bag Blogging Bonanza. As I may have hinted at in my last post, I have made a lovely little dolly bag to sit inside my new handbag. I used some of my favorite fabric that I used for my notions purse. This Heather Bailey fabric has always made me smile and it just happens to match the colour scheme of my new bag woohoo! Lucky me, I also had the foresight to buy some extra fabric when I had the chance.

I wanted to have a cylindrical dolly bag as a project bag as it seems to make sense for circular knitting needles that coil round naturally, to sit against a round bag side.

I used a saucepan lid to draw the shape I wanted and then measured the circumference to obtain the size for the bag sides. I also measured the height of the handbag in which it was to sit for the height of the sides. As you can see below, this seemed to work as it fits inside my new bag very nicely.

I'm so pleased with how well the colours work together. With the project bag and the Bag Swapper, I use for all my bags, pushed into the corners of the bag there is still lots of room for other useful items to be carried.

I used fairly heavy weight fusible interface on both the exterior and the lining fabric which means the bag stands up pretty well on its own. This is useful for keeping the yarn in the bag on the floor, or table while knitting to keep it safe and clean.

This was one of the first times I had sewed a straight edge to a curve and it shows. I did not do the best job and my maths was a little awry, so the circumference of the base and the sides did not match exactly. This meant a bit of fudging which leaves the bottom with something to be desired. I think next time I do a circular based bag, I'll actually do some proper maths rather than just fudging things. Its not like I don't know how to do the maths, I was just being lazy.

As you can see, the base isn't exactly perfectly round. But I rarely look at the bottom of bag, as I might have mentioned my last post uh-hem. It is round enough for me and it does it's job. I left 1" gaps on the exterior fabric, around 1.5" from the top of the bag, on each side hem. Once the bag was all put together I sewed exterior and lining together round the circumference of the bag at the top and bottom of those gaps to form the casing for the cords.

I used some random cord I bought for piping and cut a couple of pieces to pull the the top of the bag together. I may buy some nicer cord one day, but for now, this works.

All in all, I am pretty pleased with my new (slightly wonky) project bag. I've still got some of this fabric left, I wonder if I can find a pattern for a sun hat?