Thursday, November 26, 2020

お弁当袋 (Bento Bag)

It was time to start on a new bag for myself.  I had purchased some rafia "yarn" quite sometime ago after being inspired by a summer trip to Japan (& purchasing a rafia bag up there).  While my purchased bag was perfectly fine, of course, in my typical sense, I knew I could make a better one that could hold more stuff and be ... B-I-G-G-E-R!  The only problem was that I just never found a pattern or another bag that inspired me to make one until now.  When I saw this pattern, I knew I could make it work with all the other bags that I had made (aka, no need for a liner!) and perhaps I could even figure out how to make it work with all of my amazing Furoshiki bags! 

So, off I went to my stitchionaries to see which flat pattern I would make with it (Did you really expect me to simply make a garter stitch bag?!).  At first, I was contemplating about using the simple and effective seed stitch pattern but I thought that perhaps that was too complacent of me (that is my typical go to stitch pattern for something dense (enough) and flat) so, the search was on!  I ended up using this stitch pattern found in my Vogue Stitchionary Vol. 1: Sugar Cubes.  I ended up casting on 65 sts for a 49.5 cm wide square (1 st for the edge on either side plus the 8+1 sts pattern for a total of 7 repeats of the pattern) and did 36 repeats of the pattern (12 repeats per square) until the material was 123 cm long.  I actually had to purchase four (4) more balls of yarn as my original two (2) balls was only enough to make up 12 repeats (essentially 1/3 of the bag).  Fortunately for me, the yarn shop in which I originally purchased it from still kept it in stock so, I was able to get it relatively quickly. 😉👍

Then I followed the instructions on how to sew up the bento bag.

As for the handle, instead of attaching it to the bag, I'm using my furoshiki handles so that I can use it as a messenger style bag.
 
Here's what it looks like:
Front
Side
Back
I had wanted a "bigger" bag and I certainly got one! 😉😁🙌 🎉   Now the true test will be me actually using it in real life to see how it really holds up. 

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