Purses

I don't care what my husband says - you can't have too many purses.

This is one of the first purses I ever made:

I LOVE Deco-Ribbon. I made a bunch of little purses for friends and relatives out of it, and I decided to use all the leftovers in one big bag.

Other side:

I decided how big of a bag I wanted, then seed-stitched the panels and a handle and sewed it all together. (You can see where I screwed up the seed stitch in the green part.) Deco-Ribbon is very stretchy, however, so when I loaded things into the bag, the handle stretched so much that the bag was down to my knees. I put it away for a while to think about it.

I finally decided to remove about half the length of the handle. I did this by folding a good bit of the handle to the inside of the bag, stitching it down, and sewing a lining into the purse to hide the whole mess:

Oh, I also added one of my "Diana's Originals" labels on the inside. Those are fun.

Still in love with the ribbon yarn. I can't remember what pattern I used for this one, and if I remember, I'll post the info. Michael's had a huge sale on Moda Dea Ticker Tape one day, so I bought a ton of it. I love that stuff.

Behold the amount of stretch this stuff has:

That's a pound skein of Caron mustard yarn - and I don't know why this photo is so purple. But you can really cram stuff in that bag. I used this as my carry-on when we flew to San Diego. It held my wallet, phone, Security-Approved Denise knitting needles, yarn, pattern, snack, reading material, and a water bottle until I was forced to throw it away. The thing just keeps stretching.

Pattern: Stitch'n'Bitch Book (the first one), p. 169 "Chinese Charm Bag"
Yarn: Red one - some great hand-dyed cotton/acrylic I bought in Denver. Blue one - either the cotton I bought off Ebay and hand-dyed, or Patagonia, or Araucania Nature Cotton. I seriously can't remember. But it's great, whatever it is.

Aren't these cute? I bought those little Buddha charms at a scrapbooking store (not that you can tell what they are in this photo), and I've been putting them on everything.

By the way, I machine-sew all the edges and seams in the linings, but I always hand-sew them into the bag. Lots of people claim to machine sew the linings into the bag, but they're obviously not using my sewing machine to do it. My machine HATES that. It chews and growls and eats half the purse before I can wrestle it free.


This purse is knit using sliced up plastic shopping bags as seen on Knitty Gritty. I couldn't get a better shot of it, as it has no ability to hold itself up properly, so this sort of looks like a crime scene photo. I think it's a great purse, and it's fun to identify all the bags - blue printing for Kroger, green for Publix, and that strange yellowish blotch in the middle is a Home Depot bag. I think of this as "stunt knitting," where you knit with something just to see if you can do it.

Moral: Become a knitter and have all the purses you could ever hope for.