PURSE-uation

If you're anything like me and you knit or crochet, you have a respectable yarn stash and a handful (or more) of UFOs floating around in your house somewhere. Admittedly, I have several ~ skeins and UFOs ~ and here's one of them... My first knitted and felted purse.

You probably won't believe me (well....maybe you would) but I've had the purple yarn since I lived in Chicago more than 15 years ago! It's a mohair, silk and wool blend that I bought for a lace wrap that got destroyed by my cat and my dog during one of their epic games of chase when I was about 3/4 of the way through it. Remarkably, they survived...

Anyway, about 3 years ago I decided to try felting and thought I'd make a simple purse using the left over yarn from the wrap so I found this pattern which seemed fairly simple and gave it a whirl. Here's a pic of the inspiration design.


Simple right? I knew I wouldn't have enough of the purple (a blend from Brown Sheep Co. ~ Prairie Silks) so I went through my stash and found a bit more (a lama and wool blend from Cascade) and a bit ribbony frou frou stuff that needed to be used up.



Long story short, it's finally finished! And while a seasoned felter and sewer would have achieved a more polished, I'm pretty satisfied with my first attempt. I would like to try knitting and felting a purse again though I know for sure that I won't use a pattern with handles like these - too easy to get stretched out. In fact, I reinforced these with something called Peltex that I got at Joanne's which still didn't give me the firmness I was looking for but was probably better than my 'Mother of Invention' original idea of using a wooden straight-edged ruler on each side (I lined it after all so no one would have actually seen them).

I found some pretty fabric to line it with which was actually pretty simple (drop in and hem stitch) except that the handles got a bit tricky...


and then used up the fabric flowers I made a few weeks back to embellish the front...


Et voila! I know that I'm all about making things and giving them to other people but I think I'm going to keep this for myself. Mostly because of how parts of it came together and also because the gals I have in mind to give it to wouldn't use it on the grounds of not wanting it to get messed up. So, we'll see...the jury's still out for now. It's roomy though...and soft...and the colors are delicious!

Have you tried your hand at felting?