Fabulising February - Felted Bag

Hello again everyone!
After spending a few days repairing the fleece jacket from my last post, I've opted for an easy project today. I don't actually have a 'before' picture of this project, except on the mending pile. This was a sweater given to me by an ex-colleague who didn't wear it anymore and knew that I loved upcycling. It was one of those diamond-patterned knitwear thingies without sleeves. Not entirely sure what the correct name for those are actually. Oh, you can see it on the original mending pile picture. Hang on, let me point it out as well :)

Yes, there it is, I've encircled it :) This is where I just emptied the mending bag and took a picture, but you see a bit of this top. 

So that was it. Not my style although I could see it having some Lorelai Gilmore potential, but SO not my colour. What to do? And then I realised, this is really good quality knitwear, let's use it as my very first felting project! So in the machine it went. Every single load of laundry I did, the sweater would be thrown in. I don't have a dryer so this was the only option. Not like I was in a hurry, so this part of the project took a few weeks of not months.

In the end it came out quite well and was a good bit smaller and tighter. I could have washed it even more but I guess at some point you just have to call it a day. right? Now that I had the felted bit, what else to do? I still didn't like the colour but I really wanted to use it. I had an idea for a bag but not exactly a lot of material to work with. Then, as I was organising many things at the same time, I realised I needed some of those plastic envelope thingies to keep stuff it and how cool would that be if I could make my own. Brilliant!

The end result is not bad, I think. Yes it's still pink but with some ribbon and a cute button it looks a lot better

:) I had one single button with a diamond pattern so of course that had to be used here. 

 

This is it! Looks very crafty yes good enough to even use at work!

I have now also learned that sewing a button hole into a ribbon is not as easy as it sounds as the ribbon can snag a big. But you can't really see that so that's ok ;)

Tomorrow the sewing will have to take a break as it's pancake day! One of the best days of the year :) I'm trying to watch a pancake race again, but given that I actually have to work as well, that may not be possible. At least there will be pancakes for dinner, yumm!