23 July 2008

Small and stripey bags

BYOB Bag by Moira Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
In the last few blogposts, I have been looking at colour variations of the BYOB - Bring Your Own Bag knitting pattern and how you can make very different-looking bags just by selecting a different colourway.
Today, I want to look at some other changes you could make to the basic pattern to make some unique bags for your next shopping trip.

The original BYOB bag had a solid Seed Stitch base and a flexible mesh mid-section. However you could elect to delete the lace part of the pattern and work the bags completely in Seed Stitch instead. This would give a slightly smaller and firmer bag which would be a good choice for a visit to the Farmer’s Market.
Seed Stitch from Reversible Knitting Stitches E-book by Moira Ravenscroft & Anna Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
Seed Stitch is a beautiful stitch and is truly reversible. This means that both sides of the fabric look the same. It is actually the first stitch in our Reversible Knitting Stitches book and although it is very simple to work, it remains one of my favourite stitches. It gives such a lovely depth of shade and colour intensity and produces a wonderfully strong fabric.

Another key quality of Seed Stitch is that it lends itself to a wide variety of striped patterns. The bag in the photograph above, for example, has a 26-round pattern repeat with thick and thin stripes. I worked this in the autumn colourway that I wrote about herebut I could imagine this in a variety of different colours for some spectacular bags.
BYOB Bag by Moira Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
The second example shown above has evenly-sized stripes but with extra interest formed by the change of the leading contrast colour in the pattern repeat. This is only a simple change in the colour patterning, but it gives quite a complex look.

Changing to an all Seed Stitch fabric makes these into good, strong bags well-suited for moderately heavy loads of shopping. Indeed, I often use these bags when I am heading to the shopping mall and find them great for more general shopping.

It is also possible to line these bags with a light-weight cotton liner in the same way as the Weymouth Bag from the Southampton Collection. This would make a really useful shopping bag which would be perfect for most of your everyday grocery store visits.

By now we have come a long way from the original design, but with only subtle changes in the overall pattern. Next time I am going to look at another solid-sided bag, but this one worked in Basketweave.

As you can probably tell by now, I love knitted bags! If you would like to see some more of the patterns I have available for bags, then please click hereand if you would like to read more about our Reversible Knitting Stitches book, then please click here.

Until next time – Happy Knitting!

Moira 
Keywords: Patterns/Bags, Tutorials/Bags,
bag, bags, BYOB 2.0, shopping bag, knitted bag, stripes, Seed Stitch, brown, rust, gold, yellow, autumn colourway, fall colorway,

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