Quilted wool project bag

A short and sweet post today, because it’s about yet another project bag! For those who have been following my Hobbit robe progress, I’m excited to report I’ve finally finished piecing together the top layer and am in the process of booking Dastardly Line to do the quilting. I cut back a portion of the pieced layer, because I wasn’t happy past-Amy had included some man-made fibres. The pieces I removed were large enough that it seemed a waste not to do something with them, so I decided to turn them into yet another project bag. I don’t know about you, but as a knitter I can never be without enough project bags!

I pieced together multiple pieces of wool, corduroy and velvet from my remnant and scrap baskets, to create the final fabric. I ironed between each piece, to create flat seams to make the sewing part easier and neater. Once I had cut these sections away from the original quilt topper, I quilted the pieced fabric onto thrifted wool (an old dog blanket to be precise, hot-washed and tumble dried) to create a stable material from which to sew the bag. The wool scraps, having been cut to random shapes and sizes, some on grain and some on the bias and everything in between, stretched at different rates. The wool backing created that essential stability necessary to produce a functional bag.

I love the texture of the resultant fabric, the wool scraps quilted onto the wool backing. It creates this thick, stable, woolly, textured fabric. I love that the design is different on each side of the bag, and the fabric is sentimental to me. Some is from previous projects, meaningful pieces of clothing, or leftovers from Craft & Thrift shop days. I messed up the topstitching along the zip, by forgetting to do it before I’d sewn up the sides and cut the zipper length, so it’s not as neat as it could be. Since it’s for me to use though, I’m not bothered, it’s neat enough and doesn’t affect the function of the bag. This, like it’s parent project the Hobbit robe, is a living, functional memory, rather than just a bag, being made from pieces of fabric that are meaningful to me in some way.

I overlocked the edges of the bag, to create neat innards and prolong the lifespan of the item. I’m currently using an ombre gradient of greys in my overlocker and it works for a wide variety of projects. I cut a sliver of blue leather, leftovers from an interior designer sample book, for the zipper pull. I love these kind of projects, using thrifted scraps, remnants, and leftovers to produce something more beautiful and functional than the sum of its parts.