Knitted & Felted Bag with Momiji Cross Stitch Pocket

Not all my own work...

I'm a little bit in love with this bag in its lovely autumn colours. The idea started when my very talented mother agreed to make me a panel of Momiji dolls in cross stitch.

The Momiji design comes from Issue 215 of Cross Stitcher Magazine (August 2009) but my ma changed all the colours for me, including the centre doll, who has green hair just like me :)

I did make a small contribution to her masterpiece. I sewed the little button onto the purple doll, the orange bow onto the green doll and the pom pom hair bobbles onto the blue doll. I also sewed the panel onto an orange felt backing and then sewed over the raw edges of the aida with sparkly orange ribbon from HobbyCraft

I wanted to use the panel in a practical way so I decided to make a knitted shoulder bag. I used Rowan Scottish Tweed Aran that I had left over from my knitted rabbit due to my inability to tell the difference between 50g and 100g balls of wool. The bag was knitted loosely on 5.5mm needles. I cast on 55 stitches and did stocking stitch until it looked bit enough. The strap is a simple 10 stitches of garter stitch.

I made a terrible job of making the bag up - dodgy stitching and lumps and bumps everywhere. Happily, I had already decided to felt it. I think you need to felt a lot of knitted bags as they are just too stretchy otherwise. Two goes round the washing machine at 60 degrees and the bag was nicely shrunk and all my mistakes safely hidden. The final bag size is 12 inches wide and 11 inches long.

For a bit more structural integrity, I decided to make a lining for the bag from a brown cotton print and heavy weight sew-in interfacing. I also added a magnetic clasp and a small inner pocket.

I attached the Momiji doll panel with four orange buttons to start with. I was going to sew all four sides down flat but then I decided the panel would work pretty well as a front pocket for the bag. To finish, I hand sewed the lining into the bag.

This is probably my favourite thing I've made this year and all thanks to my lovely mum....

Melx