Bag experiment

I was inspired by a post in Gill Thomas's Elegant Sufficiency blog to dig out some fabric squares and strips I got as part of a magazine subscription package and experiment with a little bag to hold one ball of wool. I've been wanting to try one of these for a while and Gill's post pushed me to give it a go.

Gill and I recently connected through a family history website. It is uncanny to find someone, living on the other side of the world sharing a common ancestor in the eighteenth century, who has so many similar interests. There is a whole new area of research here - looking for the bag gene!

Gill has a great post on making some of her bags. In my somewhat cramped sewing space at the moment, due to the building work going on around us, I used a much more rough and ready method to construct my prototype. I will, however, work out a set of measurements and employ some accuracy when replicating.

My precut strips were 13cm wide - about the height I wanted in my wool bag. I folded the end over to get a square. This became my base.












I then folded the square over four times to get my length - minus  3 seam allowances - since I was going to use one long strip for the side instead of 4 squares. In fact, I underestimated the 3 seam allowances and needed to reduce the length of my side piece slightly when I pinned the base to the side piece.

I stitched it and made a second one as lining, stitched around the top and turned it inside out. Yeh bag!
So it would work for my ball of wool, I added a casing and elastic.

Voila! reversable bag.

Not only does it work for my ball of wool, but on my current project the knitting and needles sit in the bag as well.

Exactly what I wanted.

Now how many more of these can I use or give away?