A gift for Jacq

When I finished Auntie Bo's 1st bag way way back in March , I blogged about a website called 'Future Girl's Craft Blog' and her excellent tutorial on "How to create a lining for a crochet bag" - and the complimentary "How to sew in a lining you've made into a crochet bag" from which I have learned a LOT about how to do these things!!

I really liked the way she made quite complicated things seem simple, so when I saw that she'd designed a handbag called the Starling Handbag (with free pattern to download) and then had created some "Crochet-a-long" videos I thought I'd have a go.

It was a bit more complicated than the ones I had made up until that point which had basically consisted of just 2 bits of crochet whip-stitched together at the sides and a handle added on...

Even though they're cute...eh?

So anyway, back to the Starling bag - I had a go - I followed the Crochet-A-Long step by step - I struggled and struggled with the Foundation Single Crochet - a useful but b'stard hard divvil of a stitch, and I got there! 

I was inspired by some lovely stripy fabric in the Summer of Love fat quarter collection from the fabulous TabbyCat Fabric and so this is what the result looked like...

Some of the inner lining which inspired the outside...

The other pics of the bag are here on my Picasa web albums

Quite a few people have made the Starling bag and they send pictures to Alice (Futuregirl).

She puts them in a flikr pool called Futuregirl Starling Handbags Pool - Check it out. It's amazing that with 1 pattern, so many different designs can be made..!