A Knitter Sewing Bag

Sewing. It's like cheating for knitters and just like cheating is very productive! I started out with this neato piece of fabric (so far I have accidentally typed yarn instead of fabric twice) that was a gift from my Mom (or more accurately~ my Mom paid for it and I haven't paid her back yet). I don't have any sewing patterns and I figured none would work here because of the nature of the fabric. And while I was raised by awesome seamstresses (my Grandmother had her own store) and I kinda know how to knit, I don't particularly care for measuring and pinning so I just decided to wing it.
I started by ripping out the part of the fabric that I figured would make a good face of a bag and then I measured it. It was exactly 18" by 17.5" which was fun. And then I did some more ripping all approximately 17.5 by 3.5 inches. I really didn't measure these proper like which we'll talk about more later.
Then I spent some time putting together the strips in a pleasing way and then I put colour coding pins in so that when I sewed them together I wouldn't forget which one went with which. I am just so clever like that.
After sewing all the strips I ironed down the edges and finally recognized I could no longer ignore that one piece I ripped a little hasty.
That'll do.
So this is the other side of the bag. I'm very happy with it. I didn't want the strips to match up but I didn't want it to look disjointed either.
Then I took a break because the sewing machine got Spike so riled up he jumped up on my chair and kinda went a little Spawn-kitty on me. I have some battle scratches from taking these photos. The things I'll do for my blog eh.
He ended up getting his claw stuck in the top of the chair so I had to tip the chair down so he could detach his claw~ afterwards he stalked away and I resumed sewing. Here's the bag sewn together....

Spike was calmed by the bag and laid down for a nap.
Luckily I was onto the handles at that point. I took all the scraps and ripped them into approximately 1.5" strips and then sewed the wrong sides together, and folded them right side out afterwards with help of a massive safety pin. You would have thought I would have learned my lesson and measured the strips but no. After I ironed them I discovered what I had made.

The most un-even winding pathway strips ever. Hilarious.
I folded them into each other but I'm not happy with the look of them so I'm going to buy some ribbon and sew it onto the joins to make it look less... home-school.

When I did the hem I didn't want to pin so when I was ironing the inside seam I just folded over a chuck of fabric and pressed it. When I went to sew it I just lined up the crease with the 15 mark on the sewing machine and let her fly. I sewed the handles on with the square method which is really hard to rip out when you sew the handles on the wrong side but eventually I got it.
And here we are! A finished bag. I may line it with that stuff that makes it more sturdy- more because of the fraying ends than anything else. I lurves it.
And here's the koi fish I made in a latte last week. I made the poor woman wait for her drink while I ran to my purse to get my camera. I can't actually make foam art but I was attempting to make a tree when I was doing this. Isn't that just freaking wild?