Little Miss' Beautiful Bright Bag

A short while ago a dear friend of mine cleared out her attic and needed to re-home some yarn. Naturally I selflessly offered to take in the yarn and treat it as my own, how thoughtful of me. And that is how I came to have this pile of PINK yarn.     Wow is it PINK.     P-I-N-K     P--I--N--K

See what I mean ?

The PINK yarn, plus an old denim belt from Little Miss' jeans, was the inspiration for the Beautiful Bright Bag. I wanted a mini-project to make a change from making blankets, and it had to be something that would be finished quickly so I could get instant-hooky-satisfaction. The pink on its own was a bit much, even for Little Miss, so I played about a bit until I got this funky colour combo ....

I totally love this colour combination, I don't often feel 100% happy with my colour choices - I'm soooo indecisive, but this time I felt it was Just Right.
All the yarn is random double-knitting weight, from my stash, and I used a 5mm hook to work up a long rectangle of simple treble stripes (that's a UK treble). I think there were about 30 stitches in a row....

I turned the work at the end of each row, so the finished striped alternate between right side and wrong side. Otherwise the work would have all slanted to the left and ended up sort of parallelogram shaped, but of course I just wanted a rectangle. The stripes worked up really quickly, such a satisfying little project ....

After about 40 rows I decided the length was just right, and then I had to deal with the ends ....

... a lot of ends ...

I added a border of 2 rows of double crochet, and scallops along the two short sides, folded the whole piece up in half and double-crocheted the sides together. The finished outer of the bag is about 6 inches wide, and 8 inches long (totally guessing here :) I didn't even use that much of the pink yarn in the end, but who cares ?!

There was some bright-pink-with-white-spots fabric in my stash, just right for the lining ...

 .... and the denim belt would be perfect for the strap ....

The lining was made from a long rectangle of the fabric. I hemmed along the top and bottom edges....

... then folded it in half, wrong side out, to make a shape the same size as the bag, and sewed up the two sides. Here you can see it right side out, but of course as its the lining and is going inside the bag, it should really be right side in ...

(the next lot of photos are taken in the evening and the light is rubbish -sorry) 

I decided to give the bag a simple button and loop fastening. The loop was just 3 strands of yarn plaited ...

I hand stitched the lining in ... can you see my stitches ? I tried reeeeally hard to make them teeny tiny ....

... then crocheted a couple of little flowers from my Sunflower book, and affixed them to the strap with buttons to match the big button on the front.

All that remained was to hand-sew the strap to the sides of the bag ...

And Ta-Daaa!!! One Beautiful Bright Bag.

I left it on the table overnight, and when Little Miss discovered it in the morning I heard her cry "Mummy! The bag! I love it! Its aMAZing !!!". A Beautiful Bright Bag for a Beautiful Bright girl :)