I’ve been knitting so much lately that my hand/wrist has been bothering me. I’m sure that my recent obsession with my gym’s fitness classes haven’t helped. My grip strength needs some work, and my forearms are just super sore all the time it seems.

ANYWAY, the other night I felt like I needed a break. I probably should have spent that time making Christmas gifts. But I’m not that nice. In fact, I’ve been a pretty selfish crafter these days. Instead of knitting, I made a project bag. FOR ME!

At first, I intended to make a smaller bag, for smaller knitting projects – looking at you, Japanese knot bag. But then I found this free pattern posted by Shannon, coincidentally the same talented designer that published Antrorse, the work in progress red sweater stuffed in the bag right here.

Super simple. The bag has 8 pieces, including pocket AND interfacing. The tricky parts for me included attaching the interfacing to the lining fabric. Tricky because it is NOT fusible interfacing, and I did NOT want to sew it in. So I used some Heat-n-Bond. The other tricky part was attaching the lining and outer bag together at the curved top seam. The instructions called for pressing a 1/4″ hem and then butting those together and top stitching. I skipped the pressing part and just folded the pieced together as I stitched.

The other modification I made to the published pattern was to omit the exterior pocket. I don’t intend to reverse the bag, so I kept the pocket on the lining.

The fabrics all came from my stash; a Bella solid and an Ikea print. See the two deer? I did that on purpose.

What an improvement from the Lululemon shopping bag, which was just a smidge too small.

I like this type of open top bag for large knitting projects. There’s not zipper or clasp for the yarn to tangle up on, and the open top means keeping the yarn ball in the bag while knitting.

And it’s pretty.

My next sewing project really will be Christmas gifts. I mean it!