I Could Use Another Bag, Maybe Two
I’m not much of a fancy, shmancy purse kind of girl. Usually when I carry a bag it’s on one of two occasions. For everyday, I wear a small pouch on a long cord, just large enough to carry my cell phone, keys, and cards. When I am traveling whether for a long walk or on my bike I use a drawstring backpack for anything I bring along. This summer I realized mines were looking tired. This was the perfect excuse to get crafty.
Back in my college days I attempted to learn embroidery. What I actually learned was that I am not guru material. I haphazardly use a running and chain stitches in order to add doodles of color. It works for me.
For both the pouch and drawstring backpack I used this technique with 3 strands of cotton floss to embellish some denim scraps I had. The cord for the pouch is cotton knitted eye-cord I made.
Things took an unexpected turn when I was deciding on straps for the backpack. Long ago, like literally 12 years ago, I became obsessed with learning to weave as a college student majoring in Apparel, Textiles, and Merchandising. At school we were learning to weave on a big, elaborately engineered dobby loom. In a search at the local library I stumbled across weaving that was a little more my speed. Apparently I could weave with just cardboard cards, tablets. The cards would act as harnesses to raise the threads for weaving. I was able to weave narrow strips, the first using 10 cards with 40 threads. I never did anything with that sample (or any of the other narrow bands I wove). All these years later it would be the perfect addition to my bag project.
Great! Well sort of great. I only had enough for one strap. I needed to make another narrow band to match my original. This proved trickier than I thought. I remembered the pattern was from the book Creating With Card Weaving by Sally Specht. I found the draft and threaded up my cards with the same #10 crochet cotton used in the first weaving.
In the end I realized that somehow I had managed to mix up the color sequence (not even realizing it). The two straps are different plus my old sample is more irregular with obvious mistakes. Oh well, I still think the bag turned out nice.
As a bonus, I am obsessed with weaving again. Time to dig out my old weaving hoard.
Traditions in Cloth 