Knit and Full and Handbag In a Day (or maybe a week or two)

What a busy time I've had the past few months. Personal and family commitments seem to take over in the spring-but there has to be time for art too. This semester's course, Three-Dimensional Quilts, at St. Lawrence College has kept me creative. With 4 days left to have a project to show for my time in this course, I've been very busy the last few weeks.

My personal goal was to use lots of 3 dimensional embroidery stitches on a finished piece. So far, no piece finished, let alone a hand embroidered one...but we're getting there. Actually, that's not true. The last 2 days were spent at the college with friends working on individual projects and having fun. I spent lots of time working on various projects, and did finish my purse-complete with polymer clay buttons.

For this course we were asked to knit and then full a small purse or handbag. I thought this was an excellent time to try out Kool-aid dying, so I bought a few balls of white wool and went Kool-aid crazy at the grocery store. I wanted to dye the wool blues and greens and purples (my idea of ocean colours). Problem one-you can no longer buy that really bright berry blue Kool-aid in Canadian grocery stores. I went to EVERY grocery store in the city. Later I found out that it's been discontinued-at least in Canada. I did eventually find one store that carried Ice Blue Lemonade Kool-aid. Very pale, pastel blue. Go to the grocery store and buy 24 packages of Kool-aid, I dare you! The cashier thought I was a bit crazy.... Anyhow, I dyed my wool yarns, tried jello as a dye too for the fun of it and ended up with some beautiful wool to knit with.

Problem 2, I don't knit. I had to find a book to teach me how to cast on and then how to knit and purl. Then after a few rows of that, I got bored and tried out some patterned stitching-diamonds, diagonal lines, railroad tracks and the like. I Just kept reminding myself that it didn't matter how sloppy it looked, it was getting fulled. After 2 days of endless knitting, I finally ended up with a piece large enough for my liking. Not pretty, not neat, not stitched with even tension-and it doesn't matter. I stitched up an I-cord with a button hole on either end and threw it all in the washing machine to full. If you've never fulled anything, I highly recommend it. It's like magic-ugly knit, turned into beautiful thick fuzzy fabric!

In the process of creating this bag, the only way I could think of adding a handle was to attach it with buttons. Since I've done this, I see most everyone else just sewed the handle right over the side seams of the bag, but the button works, and also allows for the versatility of removing the handle and using the bag as a clutch. I'm not the kind of girl to go out and buy buttons, I made them. It took me 8 hours of mucking around with polymer clay since I have not spent much time experimenting with polymer clay canes, but I think this attempt was hugely successful! I have lots of the cane left unbaked-so if anyone can't stand to be without a piece, contact me.

I do have to say, I love this purse. I love the colours, I love the wavy shape, I love the buttons. One lady asked me, "who put those gawdy buttons on that beautiful bag?" She didn't think blue buttons worked-I think they do, even though there isn't much blue visible throught the bag. As always, your opinions are most welcome.