Recycled Sweater Overnight Bag

Earlier this week, I saw a cute Bowling Bag style purse on Craftster (thread for that bag is here). I am not much of a purse person, but I do like making them. (Irony? What?)

I wanted to try this bag (there is a link to a tutorial on the Craftster thread) so I was thinking about fabric and interfacing and zippers and things all day Wednesday when I was at work. When I got home from work, I was looking at my fabric stash and trying to decide which fabric to use. I have a weird block when it comes to fabric. It seems so final to cut into fabric, unlike working with yarn which can fairly easily be undone and reworked.

Suddenly I had an idea. I have a pile of felted sweater pieces from when I made the blanket for my friend. (i just realized i don't have a picture of it! I'll have to get her to take one for me.) So, I pulled out the felted pieces and made this Wednesday evening.



It's just big enough for a decent sized knitting tote or for an overnight bag. It is much bigger than the bag in the tutorial, which I mostly used for inspiration rather than a pattern.



I even managed to (mostly) match up the stripes on the sides. The zipper was recycled from a sweater and the felted icord is leftover from a bag I made a long time ago. Apparently I got a little carried away with the icord at that time. It was fairly tough to sew, the felted pieces of this sweater were quite thick. I haven't lined it yet, I'm trying to decide what I want for pockets etc. So far though, I'm really pleased with how it turned out.