Noni Carpet Bag (Take 2)

Pattern: Noni Carpet Bag (Medium size)
Yarn: Patons Classic Wool (2 skeins beige/oatmeal, 2 skeins grey heather, 1 skein dusty rose)
Needles: 8mm circular (yarn held double throughout)
Dimensions: (after felting) 9×5x11 inches (shrinkage of about 40-50%)

I am thrilled with this project for four reasons:

1. I eliminated a bag of guilt stashed Patons wool.
2. I ticked off a gift I promised that’s been hanging over my head for a year now.
3. It took only two weeks from start to finish.
4. It turned out so much better than my first carpet bag did that I may have to steal it.

For this version I just went for the medium size instead of halfway in between medium and “rather huge”.  It was just right for proportions, unlike the last time where I ended up with a short rectangle, and had me a little worried about subbing Patons for the Cascade 220 the pattern calls for.  I think I might put this down to just a really effective washing/felting. It shrunk a lot. The felt is pretty stiff on its own, and about a cm thick. Overall I think Patons shrinks much more on row height than stitch height. The only way this turned out iffy was in felting the flowers, which tended (again) to want to felt to long, thin petals rather than squat, round petals. If I do this a third time I’ll aim for short, fat petals pre-felting.

For the finishing I went back to these instructions from the Noni site, which work like a charm. Doing the lining and handles isn’t hard as long as you have the patience to get through all the steps. There’s a lot of finicky hand-sewing. Plastic canvas is definitely a must to make the bag stand up and keep its shape, because it’ll sag as it wears.  If I have one piece of advice, it’s to tack the plastic canvas down good and snug at a few key points, and sew down the handle tabs and flower decorations through the bag and the canvas layer, for structural integrity. If I could have machine-sewed the handle tabs down, I would have, but sadly the felt was too think to get under the sewing machine’s foot.

This time around I was much happier with how the handles and lining went in. (Thanks again to Kim for letting me raid her basement fabric stash last summer, where I got this hot pink for the lining. It is mwah!) I learned from last time and set the handle tabs in lower, so that only the handle pieces would show above the top and leave the lining hidden. I tacked the lining down over the tabs, just at the line of the bottom of the top stripe. And the last touch, a magnet snap clasp, which is seriously the must luxe you can get for $2. The handles are your garden-variety faux-bamboo, 6 inches wide, from Zellers.  If only I could find bag feet one of these days.

As finicky as this bag is, the payoff was still in the finished product. I was so smitten with this after finishing I had to go right out and buy two more Noni patterns, for that rainy day when I go berserk and need to throw my wool in the washer again. Fun.

Next up, socks to finish, then moving on to what ever stash I can nibble off next.