Saturday, April 18, 2009

New Handbag Pattern in a New e-Book


I'm pleased to announce that my designing friends have done it again! 


My "Half Double Half Circle Handbag" crochet pattern is now available in volume three of our downloadable Strapped for Bags series.

Like our three other e-books, it is 100% designer-produced, and that's why we're known as.... Straight from Today's Designers. So many of us had a bag pattern to contribute that we divided them among 3 volumes.

About my pattern: 
What you see is the result of two goals. The first was to revel in the built-in drama of a self-striping yarn like the Noro Kureyon you see here. It's an easy stitch pattern of "half doubles" (hdc in the US, htr in the UK and Oz) so I zipped along in suspense as each new color bloomed. Suddenly I had a handbag. 

I love the fabric of it so much that a close up of it decorates my Twitter page background. I display the bag at home for daily eye candy.

My other inspiration has been a current fashion trend for garment and handbag construction in which the grain of the fabric is spotlighted as the primary design element. Crochet is great for this because you can easily emphasize row direction, as with this bag. 

This fashion trend inspired me see what the distinctive fabric grain would look like in a solid-colored yarn, and in cotton, which can result in a very different fabric from a wool yarn.

All of our books have Ravelry pages, where a wealth of additional information is available. Here's the page for my bag; the book page showing all seven designs; project page of the multicolored version of my bag is here and the solid cotton version is here. If you're not in Ravelry, check out my new crochet design photo galleries that I'm building in Flickr.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:10 PM

    That bag makes a fun Twitter wallpaper!

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  2. Congrat for your new book again. I love your colours. And your style too.

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  3. This is going in my "hafta do these things before summer ends" file. I think it is chic and sexy. Thanks for sharing.

    Can you give me tips on what I need to do in order to take steps toward becoming a prof designer?? I feel like a need a mentor in this area who has already accomplished what I want to do but Im not sure if people really do that. Please give me your feedback. You can email me at tamikasings4u@yahoo.com or feel free to leave your comments on my page here. Also, how can I get people to view my blogspot page??

    Thank you in advance. Please help.

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  4. Gorgeous! The colors are so vibrant and the design just pops!

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  5. Wow!! It's a wonderful book!! Pattern and color selection of the handbag is just fantastic...

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