Pink evening bag
This lovely evening bag was the main project from Day 2 of the Knitting and Crochet Seminar by Golden Dragon Store September 2014. I love the way this bag looks, but it is unlikely I will be making another one. This bag took a long time to make, though it does not look difficult to make, it is. This lovely bag complements a an evening dress that I have. Now to buy a matching pair of shoes!
The Yarn
This project is knitted in Richmore Brocade which can be found at Goldren Dragon Store. The yarn is best described as variegated light and dark pink with gold lurex. The resulting fabric is known as lamé. Which looks so delicate and luxurious. Because of the lurex, it is a tiny bit scratchy, which probably explains why this yarn is used for bags rather than something to wear. Unfortunately I used up all the yarn before I realised I had not taken a photo of it! However I found a picture of it from the workshop I attended with Golden Dragon Store. It has been more 9 months since the workshop.
The fringe is a very fine pale gold lurex yarn also from Richmore called Supense. You only need a little bit of this for this project I will be keeping this for future projects! This makes any project look luxurious.
Goody Bag from Day 2
This bag was knitted on 5mm knitting needles. The yarn is generally not difficult to knit or crochet with, just requires some extra care so as not split the yarn with the knitting needle or hook. This yarn also catches very easily. When this happens I just unpick a little at the affected area, pull the yarn to try to fix it. This seems to work most of the time.
The Project
This bag is from the book by Kasuyo Nakamura. I like this book a lot because it has a innovative patterns which range from intermediate to advanced difficulty, and are light summer knits which can be used in Singapore.
I would describe this evening bag as a trifecta technique project – it requires know-how in knitting, crochet and sewing (more specifically quilting). Each part of the project is not difficult to do. It just requires know how in 3 different skills which makes it challenging.
The main body of the bag is knitted. This is the easiest part of the bag. A simple checker box design with increases and decreases at the sides. Easy peasy, knitted up really quickly.
The fringe on the flap and the sides of the bag are also crocheted together, not sewn. The instructions are in Japanese, so I relied on on someone else to interpret the diagrams and instructions. By the time I unpicked the fringe and the sides of bag twice, it dawned on me that I was going to have figure this out myself. I was ready to give up! Isn’t it interesting that since I knew I had someone to rely on to tell me what to do, I did not even bother to engineer the project? And here I am always encouraging people to knit independently! So I unpicked the sides and edges of the bag again, took a deep breath, stared at the diagram and buckled down to crochet the bag together with the gold lurex fringe. I had an epiphany and figured out that the sides of bag was crochetted together at the same time as you do the fringe. Phew!
Pink evening bag with no lining
As you can see from the above picture, the bag without the lining was very limp. The lining had to be really really firm so that the bag would hold its shape. This required machine quilting the 3 layers – the lining, batting and somewhat stiff interfacing. Followed by joining the sides of bag. Trimming the batting and sewing it to the inside of the bag. No internal pockets for this bag. The fabric for the lining is from Quilts and Friends.
Lining for the pink bag
Although I write that I won’t be making another of these, I might make a slightly different knitted evening bag. I do like how this bag turned out, and I did learn a few things making this bag.
