Two days ago I started crocheting a new tote bag in the round. I am using spun and plied plarn and vhs tape. I started off with a huge ball of yarn. Then I wound 3 skeins of it for a friend's birthday present (for tomorrow), and the bag ate up most of what was left. It looks like I'll be spinning more vhs tape this week. This is the first time that I have crochet with the vhs tape. It gives an interesting look when plied with the white plarn.
Two nights ago I crochet most of the bottom of the bag. Last night I was one row away from being done with the bag, but I was not happy with how it looked. So I frogged it (ripped out the stitches). I was trying out a new pattern where I use two different sized crochet hooks. One for the bottom and for the very top of the bag, and a large hook for the center mesh area. So today I tweaked the pattern a bit. I'm much happier with it now. I'm hoping to finish it tonight.
The pattern:
- With an I hook (I couldn't find my J hook), crochet a flat circle to the size that you want the bottom of the bag to be. If you want a pattern for this part, let me know. Otherwise I'm assuming that you know how to do this step.
- Next single crochet (sc) in a stitch (st), chain (ch) 1 and skip (sk) a stitch. Repeat for 1 round.
- Then switch to a size P hook.
- Now sc in every space (sp) until you reach the length that you want. Christi from fatbottombags says not to make it more than 13" long, because it will stretch to much. This will make your mesh sides.
- Then switch back to your I or J hook.
- I haven't gotten to this part yet, but I will be following Christi's fat bottom bag pattern for it. You will sc twice into every space for one round.
- slip stitch (sl st) the next round.
- In this round you will add your handles. You can either chain the same amount of stitches that you will skip to create the handle, or you can chain 25 stitches and skip less than that for the handle. Christi says to take the number of stitches in the round and subtract 40 from it. Then divide that by 2. That will give you the number of stitches between the handles.
- Next sl st for 2 to 3 rounds. Then bind off.
Here is an alternative pattern by Cindy at myrecycledbags. I'll be trying out this pattern next.
It's looking great Kristy! I love the way your plied plarn/vhs looks. You're so talented with making these plarns look so beautiful!
ReplyDeleteHey, I wonder if you could make the bag bigger than a mesh FatBottomBag because your plarn is plied? It might not be so stretcy as the unplied? Just a thought.
Thanks Christi! I really love how you use color in your plarn bags. I don't know what I did, but when I followed your directions to make a fat bottom bag, it just looked all wrong.
ReplyDeleteI think that some of my round plarn bags are bigger than yours. However all of them are single crochet with a size I or J hook. But that is a good point about the plied plarn. It has 3 to 4 strands vs only 2. I want to start trying new patterns, because my old ones are done so tightly with a small hook that they take a long time to make. If you take away yesterday when I frogged most of what I crochet, then this bag only took me 2 days to make. The one that I made before took a week to make. These times do not include making the yarn.
Now to post the finished bag :)