February/06 - Crocheted purse

this is the first crochet purse i've made, and i based it on the interweave textured tweed clutch pattern.

(you can see it here - http://www.interweavecrochet.com/materials.asp#textured)



i loved the pattern, but the rustic tweed was so not my style (or my craftster swap partner's), and it's kinda hard to find fancy schmancy yarns here, so i ended up using a big ball of black bernat chunky and 6.00mm hook. i was worried about using a thinner yarn, since i had a limited amount of time to make it, and i didn't know how much frogging i was going to have to do! the actual pattern calls for Takhi Donegal Tweed 100% wool yarn and a 3.75mm hook. plus, wool yarn irritates my skin, so i was happy to choose acrylic over it!


the body of the purse is a seed stitch, which is single crochet and double crochet alternating and the flap is a puff stitch. the front buckle strap is seed stitch with a single crochet border (because it looked silly without a border). i put a single crochet border around the front flap too, to help it keep in shape and not roll.


i'm not totally happy with how the back was sewn together at the bottom, but i didn't realize how unhappy i was until it was too late to fix it.


the lining took forever. because i didn't sew the purse together as perfectly as i'd have liked, the front and back are slightly different, and therefore needed slightly different pattern pieces for the lining. plus, it was all hand sewn in.

the pictures are kind of screwy, but that's because it was made with black yarn, and i had to lighten them so that you could see it clearly!


and here are the instructions for the variations i did-

as i said, i used bernat chunky and a 6.00mm hook (i don't know what that is in US sizes, sorry!)

for the front/back, chain 23 instead of 33. i did the required 17 rows, which made it a bit taller than the pattern called for, because of the chunkier yarn.

for the gusset/strap, chain 175 instead of 221. i did the required 5 rows. you couldn't really do it much smaller, unless you just did 3 rows, but that would make it fairly narrow, because of the way the puff stitch works.

for the buckle strap, i chained 7 as the pattern said. check this with the buckle you choose though! instead of making it 5 and 3/4" long, i made it 7 and 1/4". i didn't like the way the strap looked around the edges, so i decided to single crochet around the edge. starting at the top, crocheting in the obvious spots, i did sc, sc, sc, then did *sc, sc, skip one spot* repeated until the bottom corner. then i did 2sc in the corner, sc,sc,sc,sc across the bottom, 2sc in the corner, and repeated *sc, sc, skip one spot* up the side until i was three spots from the top, where i did sc, sc, sc.

for the flap, i worked 37 sc across the top instead of the 46 the pattern called for. i think i did the required 12 rows, though i don't really remember (and that was the only part i didn't write down!) then i did single crochet all around the edge of the flap.

i should have written down the finished dimensions too, but i forgot.