This was a two-week saga. I worked on this tirelessly - at home, at work, at crochet group... even right up to the last moment before my prayer meeting got started those two weeks! It took a whole Caron Baby One-Pounder skein in yellow, and quite a bit of one in pink.
Before I start discussing it in detail, I just want to say that there was no pattern for what I was doing... none. Like the lyre for the Lyra blanket, I had to come up with the schematics for this on my own. I looked for at least 2 weeks in advance for backpack patterns and they were all in the round or looked too childish in construction for me to take seriously (to want to present this as a gift to someone quite special to my life). I knew, if I wanted the bag to look the way I'd envisioned it, I would need to come up with the schematics for it, myself.
(a flat view of the finished bag - the butterflies didn't want to lay flat at that moment. XD)
First question: How do I want this to be used? To carry not just light things, but heavier things, too.
Second Question: How big should it be? I wanted this to be big enough to carry at least 5 full sized D&D/Pathfinder books and still retain its square shape.
Third Question: How in the hay am I going to get this thing to retain shape?! At that point, I had no clue.... o_O'
So, I finally boiled it down to creating this in 6 parts before putting it all together: 2 large rectangular panels (front and back), 1 long narrow panel (sides and bottom), 1 flap, 2 straps. I had a plan, now - to crochet it!
With my trusty N/9mm hook in hand, I pulled the yarn from both the outside and the middle (I, at least, have a yarn-baller now, so I won't run into this problem ever again) and made the front, back, bottom/sides, and flap using two strands of yarn at the same time - all in hdc, pulled tightly to firm it up. The straps were constructed using the same two-strand method, but in pink (5 loooooooong rows, rather than hundreds of short rows). Once I'd done all that... my fourth question quickly arose: HOW am I going to put this TOGETHER?! >_O!
Answer: carefully! I used my stitch markers and some safety pins to hold everything together, so I could (at least) get a sense of how it would look all together... but then I had to figure out, did I want to whip stitch everything together, then flip the seams on the inside? Well, I tried that first... It didn't exactly work. >_<' I wanted a bit more pink in there, so I used a decorative X stitch on the edges... yeah, it wasn't doing it for me... It was too light and looked a bit washed out against all of the yellow... so - I figured I needed to go BOLD! I got the bag taken back apart, and got the straps and flap attached to the back panel before pinning it all back together. Then I started TIGHTLY whip stitching it all together, edging it in pink as I went along. When the sides and bottoms were finished, I edged the opening at the top, and the flap, and even made a crease on the bottom in the corners and edged it tightly to give it a seam in those two places.
As far as closing it was concerned, I'd created two small chains as catches on the underside of the flap for large wooden buttons that I would later attach to act as the closure.
But now, I had a finished bag! ...but Fluttershy has a big pink butterfly on her bag! This bag needed one, too! TO GOOGLE!! Yeah, all of the crocheted butterfly patterns looked wrong or were too small... EVERY! SINGLE! ONE! that I tried never was big enough to cover the palm of my hand... So I finally figured, "...forget this!!" I took the "XL sized" butterfly pattern (UPDATED: Here's the link to Little Birdie Secrets for the butterflies.) and made three... like Fluttershy's cutie mark, used the minty green Caron (like in the Lyra blanket) for the body and antennae before tacking them all together (one on top, two on bottom - like her mark) and attached them to the very bottom edge of the flap - right in the center.
(an up close shot of the butterflies - you can see the chained latches that hook onto the buttons.)
When it was finished - it was time to attach the buttons and test it out! We filled this bag with 5-6 full sized D&D books and IT RETAINED ITS SHAPE! I did it! *Whee~! Happy dance!*
(I tried to fluff it out completely before I took this picture, but meh, that right side just didn't want to fluff!)
So, there you have it - my first fully free-handed project! It was HARD not sharing photos of this one back when I finished it in MAY. XD
Oh well, the surprise was well worth it when I saw the look on my best friend's face. :)
Well, everyone, I'm off to bed for the night. Hope you've enjoyed the spam posting that I've done tonight!
-Z
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