Dusty Vintage

This could refer to my house at the moment, but instead it's the name I chose for the latest handbag. My SIL's birthday is coming up and I wanted to craft her something special. Since I'm trying to use mostly materials that I have in my stash, I came up with this repurposed felted purse. My first knitted sweater ever, when I was about 14, was a really pretty teal blue/green color; the color was great, the design and my execution were not. So I felted the sweater, made up a pattern, and cut my pieces out of the thick resulting wool.



The embellishments are made from bits of scrap yarn and buttons, and I just happened to have a leather purse handle and magnetic closure left over from another project. The only new material I used was the fabric lining. I hope she likes it!

On another handcrafted gifting kind of note, I found this interesting website, Buynothingchristmas, put together by Canadian Mennonites to refocus the meaning of Christmas. Kind of interesting, and it has lots of good ideas on saving money with handcrafted gifts.

Repurposed

In my crafting these days I'm considering how I can use the materials I already own in new ways. For wrappings, I make little fabric bags to gift things in. For some free diaper covers, I'm using a felted wool blanket cast off from another project (details for another day). And this bag was made using yarn I got from ripping out an old knitted sweater that I didn't fancy anymore. And yes, this is one yarn, can you imagine it as a sweater? Not a very pretty sight.

How are you using materials in new ways to fuel your craft addiction?

It made it safely

My bag, that is, made it safely all the way to Australia, where it now lives with k10 from Ravelry. So now I finally get to post pics of the finished bag, and I really like how it turned out! This was for a knitted, felted or crocheted purse swap on Ravelry, the Great Knitted Purse Swap.