Sweatshirt Bag

I bought this sweatshirt at a yard sale awhile ago.  I bought it with the intention of cutting it up, but was not sure how just yet.  Since I just finished the Aloha Maddie Baby Blanket, I found myself with nothing to do.  :-)

I am figuring out what to do about my Glace Shrug, so not to worry.  I do not think I have enough yarn to complete it, so I am trying a mixed media project with it.  It'll be ready soon, promise!

So, back to the project at hand.  I figured I needed a new project bag [insert hearty laugh here] so I wanted to do that with the material.  I've worked with sweatshirt material before, so a couple of traits of this material are that it won't fray when you cut it and the cut edges will curl.  That can be a good thing or a bad thing.  Knowing these things, I am going to play off them.

First, I cut the sleeves and hood off and trimmed it so it's boxy.

Then I placed the right-sides together and pinned them to sew the side seams.

I started the stitching about a half inch from the top and bottom.  This will help the material curl when washed.

I turned it right-side out and sewed the bottom ribbed edge together.  I then took one of the sleeves and cut it up the seam to "butterfly" it.  I trimmed the seam stitching off so that the material could lay flat.  I cut the sleeve into 2" strips.

I evened out the ends so they were straight with a rotary cutter.  I did not worry that they were not the same length.  I then sewed three strips to each other, end-to-end, twice.  These will be used as the handles.

I then folded each one the long way, wrong-sides together, and sewed each handle strip.

I positioned the handles on the inside of the top edge of the bag and arranged them so that they were long enough to be shoulder straps.  I did some measuring to ensure that there was a bit of a margin at the top edge to allow for the curling.  I sewed them in place with gray thread in a box with an X in the middle.  During this, I was coming dangerously close to running out of thread.

The bobbin had about a few inches on it so I had to wind some more of this onto the bobbin.  I was keeping my fingers crossed during this period!

Hold your breath...yes, I was able to finish with enough thread.  Phew!  (I even attached a few buttons on a pair a pants that had recently fell off with the remaining thread).  Here is an inside view of the bag with all the handles attached.

Once this was done, I was pretty much done with the bag!  I threw it in the wash so that you could see the rolling edge and broken-in look it had.  I could even use this bag as a hand warmer using the kangaroo pouch!

I pulled a ball of yarn out of the closet and gave it a new home.  I think of each project of yarn and a project bag as a hermit crab.  Each set of yarn is like the crab and the bag is it's shell.

Awe, look at how cute this hermit crab is!  The shell - fabulous!