Making a Curly Purly bag

Designed for and Inspired by Marnie of the Curly Purly Waistband fame!

The great thing about using felted knitwear to make things is that you can often find designs that are knit using techniques that are beyond your ability, or with materials you simply can't afford in all the different colors needed for a given design. When I was thinking of a bag to make for Pam’s contest, I had already designed the Fluffo the Wonder Sheep bag. I wanted to do one for Marni, too, because she was one of the judges (I am such a suck-up, its true, hehehe) and because Curly Purly is just such a cute sounding phrase. And because I had a felted sweater with adorable sheep already on it-perfect!!

So, keeping in mind that a lot of the inspiration for a bag and a lot of the design decisions will be informed / guided by the materials you have on hand, I will explain how I made the Curly Purly Bag, and you can branch out from there. The height, circumference and shape of the bottom of the bag are things you can manipulate to your personal preference. Your purse comfort, so to speak...

Because of the size restrictions of the contest, I made the CP bag about 7" high, with an oval bottom. The bottom was the largest one on my ellipse template, 4" by 21/2" That made the length of the piece for the sides about 11" long. (The circumference of the bottom plus a ½” seam allowance.) The sweater I used had a turned and knit together hem, about an inch wide, so I used that for my casing. If the sweater you use doesn't have one, you can just add the 3" to the top of the sides piece, and turn and stitch to make one.

Important Note: Before you do any bonding, test a piece of your wool to make sure that it doesn't scorch. Picking up the iron and seeing a big brown iron shape is a real bummer... Use a pressing cloth if needed.

Materials:

You will need:

· Pattern pieces- enlarge the oval on a copier to desired size; draw the rest on a piece of paper according to given dimensions. There are 3 pieces:

· The bottom, cut 2

· Sides, cut 1. Include extra height for a casing, if you don't want to use part of the sweater.

· Casing, cut 1.

· A felted wool sweater (feltage)

· Scrap of heavier felt

· Stitch Witchery (SW) or other fabric bonding material (or you can just sew the two pieces together, or quilt them, or ??? whatever you decide!)

· Wooly Nylon (WN) thread (or any strong thread)

· Shoe lace or other cord for the strap

· Grommets

· Soft white yarn for the curlies (I used some re-cycled angora from a sweater I frogged. This yarn is actually left over from the ruffled cuff of a pair of socks I made, so it is recycled and a stashbuster, LOL.

· Pearl beads for the purlies (I used ones from a 4-strand (faux) pearl necklace I never wear anymore. It's a 3-strander now!)

· Misc. threads and yarns for decorating. Use what you have on hand. I note what I used for different things as go through the pattern.

· Hand sewing needles

· For seams: I use embroidery needles because they have a larger eye than sharps, betweens, etc.

· For the pearls: Use any needle that will fit through the hole in the beads that you use. I had to use a beading needle. They are very skinny, and hard to thread, so try to get pearl crafting beads with a reasonable eye, and you can use a regular sewing needle.

· For the curls: I use a yarn needle, or large tapestry needle for this kind of thing.

Optional:

· Zipper and piece of fabric for credit card pocket (I used an invisible zipper I took out of a skirt I recycled, and a scrap of Ultrasuede for the pocket.)

Super-duper optional:

I used a couple of snap halves for “feet” on the bottom of the bag using my snap press. Completely for fun, and to give a “real purse” feel to it. Do not go and buy an $80 snap press just for this! But if you have one, you know how we are always trying to find new things to do with them…

Directions:

1) Cut 2 of bottom from heavier felt. If you don't have any, you can do one of these things to make the purse bottom stiffer:

· Use some interfacing

· Make more than 2 layers

· Superfelt some of your sweater by sending it through with the jeans a few times or

· Compact the felt using wooly nylon and long stitches through the center of the fabric. Pull VERY tight, and make a few tiny stitches to hold, continue on. place the rows of tightening stitches as close or as far apart as desired. The closer they are, the stiffer the fabric will be.

2) Bond together using SW or whatever you have, following manufacturer's directions. Set aside.

3) Make eyelets in the casing using whatever technique / materials you have. I used some big grommets I had, but you can use:

· little (3/8”) eyelets

· tiny round button hole

· any other button hole

· just a hole! Hey, why get fancy!

You can make only one set of holes, if you just want one loop of strap. I made two sets, so it could have a doubled, but shorted strap for a carry bag, and one long loop for a hanging bag. Like this →→→→→

4) Sew the casing to the sides, if applicable. I sewed mine with the sewing machine, and fluffed the feltage after I was through, and it pretty much hid the seam. Groovy!

5) Decorate the bag. Oh, I bet you want to know how to make a cute CurlyPurly sheep, don’t you?

a) Sheep shape: If you don’t have a handy sheep already on your feltage, draw one. There is one you can use for inspiration on the last page/ bottom of the directions.

b) Curls: Take your soft fuzzy yarn, and double it or use more than one strand or whatever so that it is about bulky weight, and about 15” long.

i) Step One: Tie a knot, and pull it through the feltage inside the sheep shape. With sheep in lap, hold needle up at end of length of yarn, and twirl it in your fingers. Keep twirling the needle the same

ii) direction, until the yarn folds all up on itself when you bring the needle back down to the sheep.

iii) Step Two: Arrange the curls to suit yourself, and tack them down from the back, using matching wooly nylon or other thread. Bring the needle up through the feltage, around the curl yarn, and back down through the feltage again. Like a yarn over, kinda.

c) Pearls– Sew pearls here and there on the sheep, as desired.

d) Face – I made the face out of a scrap of blue felted woven wool. From a skirt pocket, to be exact. Use whatever you want/have. Mine was more Y or T shaped, too.

e) Horn – I used a piece of scrap Ultrasuede, about ½” X 2” folded lengthwise and bonded; ends tapered. Tack in the middle of the sheep’s head, twist, sew down with chosen thread or yarn. I used a piece of toast colored rayon from a recycled sweater. 4plied regular sewing thread would work just as well, I’m sure.

f) Legs – I embroidered them with a 4 plied length of vintage Seaspun Lavenda sock wool, color Blue/Grey Marl. You can use any kind of yarn you have on hand.

6) Optional side opening pocket for easy access to special goodies, like credit cards and or money.

a) Put the zipper in the side seam, shortening as necessary. Sew a new stop using the satin stitch function on a sewing machine, or just use a needle and thread and go around and around and around a whole bunch of times in one spot until there’s a big bump of thread.

b) Placement of pocket: Mine was dictated by the design, as I wanted to line of stitching to be on the border of the tan and the gray. It was about 3 1/2” by 5”. Make sure you put the pocket on with the zipper underneath it, otherwise you will open the zipper to find…no pocket!

7) Sew side seam if you didn’t put in a zipper. You should now have something that looks like a tube. At the top is… the top. Just kidding, it’s the casing for the drawstring, complete with stringholes, grommets or suchlike. At the bottom is nothing, so that’s the next step!

8) I sew the bottoms of things like this outside first, and inside second. I sew them by hand, because I like to be able to make the stitching invisible, and because I haven’t figured out how to get them to be nice and flat when I use a machine. If you aren’t using a really thick bottom sole, you can just sew it by machine. In fact, I bet someone has already whipped one of these up on their serger in 15 minutes. That’s OK, just don’t sell it on eBay…

a) Pin together: I pinned it from the outside of the side, putting the pins into the center of the sole.

b) You can actually sew the outside by hand 2 ways:

i) Use wooly nylon and overcast (or whip) stitch, with fairly small stitches. The WN will smoosh into the fuzz of the felt, and won’t show much if you used a fairly close color match.

ii) Here’s a picture I did so you can see all the layers in different colors.

iii) After you sew it with WN, you can use a decorative stitch like blanket stitch. Use a larger thread, like perle cotton, tapestry wool, sock yarn, etc. Just in case you were too… lets say undermotivated to do your own search, I found this very cool site that has a lot of the stitches I use in hand sewing, only I never knew it, lol.

http://www.42nd-dimension.com/NFPS/nfps_stitches.html

c) Turn inside out, and sew the inside, using the overcast or whip stitch.

9) Lace your drawstring through the casing. If you want to have the long or short option, do it as shown in the lacing diagram below. Tie a knot in the lace and push it through a grommet so that it is concealed within the casing. If a knot won’t fit through the grommet, overlap the ends, and sew them tightly, and well.

Patterns

The blue faced, green fleeced Lester is actual size of 3” high by 3.49” wide

The rest of the pattern pieces are not to scale, which means that they need to be drawn on a piece of paper. Even if you enlarge them on a copier, I don’t think they’ll [something missing here Patti?]