Felted Spirals Tote

Studio time in late November and early December was spent on designing and sewing a tote for myself. I knew I wanted it to be durable, roomy, and arty. Here's  the result of my efforts:

Yes, I got to play with the needlefelting machine I purchased last July. It's made by Simplicity, and is functional but not particularly well designed. For the money ($140 on sale), it was worth buying. It is easy to use and I could spend hours playing with it. I'm not sure how much I'll use it, but it's good to have it available when the felting urge hits.

The base fabric is wool melton from Sawyer Brook. The roving I used for felting was hand dyed by a friend who has a small yarn dying business. I pulled roving from two colorways that had lots of orange in them. No orange here, though. That's the beauty of working with roving; you can pull it apart to leave out bits you might not want in a particular project. After laying down the roving, weaving it where the stripes met, and felting it over and over, I felted some yarns in spiral shapes, and sewed on a multicolored nylon tape yarn and short rows of beads.

I love the colors of roving, and how they blend from one shade to the next. It adds a lot of dimension and depth to the design. I'm not much for glitz, but I really like the glimmer the beads add. Not wanting to overdo the design, I went with a smaller arty element on the back of the bag.

The chartreuse color is less vibrant in real life. It coordinates with the silk faille lining. I love a light colored lining because it allows me to see my stuff. There's nothing worse than searching through a dark lined bag!

That's a divided double pocket for my glasses and phone, plus a zippered pocket for keys. I inserted a piece of stable cardboard in the bottom and held it in place with black nickel-colored feet. (Sorry no pic.)

For durability and protection, I encased the bottom of the bag in leather. This was leftover from a vest a coworker made for a client. Janee was gracious to give it to me, and it's been languishing in my stash for a couple of years. I was glad to have it, as it protects the bottom of the bag from getting dirty. I also used it for the handles. It's super soft, yet strong, and feels really nice in my hands. This was my first experience with leather, and it sewed very easily. I tried a leather needle but found a denim needle worked better. I had no trouble feeding it evenly through my sewing machine, probably because I used my Pfaff's built in walking foot.

I used an old out of print bag pattern as a starting point, but I redrafted nearly all of it. It looks quite different from the original pattern photo.

The top of the bag is closed with a zipper. I had a waterproof one on hand from JoAnn's, and it looks great. Not that I needed it to be waterproof. But the tape on the waterproof style is very satiny, and the slide moves very smoothly. It was the perfect finish for this bag that was very fun to make and gives me a smile when I carry it!