Gingham Heirloom Bag Collaboration
By Benjamin Krudwig and Denise Renee Grace
We love a challenge here at Schacht, so when we opened a package from Fancy Tiger Crafts full of their Heirloom Yarn, fabric and some webbing, we were excited! Denise and I have done a couple of collaborations before, but this one is perhaps our favorite.
Heirloom is the "house" yarn from Fancy Tiger Crafts: 100% Romney wool, grown, milled, and dyed in the U.S. Being a hardy, rustic wool, both Denise and I thought "bag." Since oversized gingham is a fashion trend this year, we decided that would be an easy pattern to create on a rigid heddle loom.
This bag has a clever construction—one long piece of fabric is sewn up the middle with no cutting required. The fabric lays on the bias when the bag is finished, adding just one more element of excitement. The finished piece is an oversized bag that reminds us a bit of the 70s. Funky fringe (so in this year) and beautiful buttons make it an awesome fashion accessory.
This project is extremely versatile, and can be customized to suit your needs. Different widths and lengths of fabric will make differently shaped bags. The strap could be attached somewhere else with another technique and be made a different length. Make your own bag and share them with us on our social media!
Photos courtesy of Fancy Tiger Crafts
Project Specs
Weave structure: plain weave
Total warp length: 3.5 yards
Number of warp ends: 120 (60 of each color)
Width in reed: 15"
EPI: 8
PPI: 8
What You'll Need
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2 skeins each of Heirloom (100% Romney; 200 yds/4 oz) in the colors Fava Bean and Butternut
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1 yard of cotton fabric
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2 yards of cotton webbing or other strap material
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5 buttons
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15” rigid heddle loom
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8 dent reed
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fringe twister
Materials
Equipment
Directions
Making the Outer Fabric
Warping: Thread 12 ends of Fava Bean and 12 ends of Butternut, alternating stripes across the full weaving width of your loom.
Weaving: Work in plain weave alternating 12 picks of Fava Bean, and 12 picks of Butternut. Weave a balanced weave (same picks per inch as warps per inch), or to square the pattern.
Hemstitch at the beginning, weave the whole length of your warp, and end with hemstitching.
Finishing: Felt the fabric to create a dense yet soft fabric. We put the fabric in the washing machine on a full hot cycle with soap and threw it in the dryer for around 30 min. on high (you could hand-felt the fabric as well). We advise monitoring the fulling process. You do not want to over felt. You can always do more but never less.
Assembly
- Fold the finished fabric in half.
Hand sew up one side using a whipstitch. Try to line up your stripes in this process.
- Open the folded piece up, flattening the corner at the bottom.
- Take the top right edge of the fabric and bring it down so the right edge lines up with the top of the triangular portion, whip stitch along this seam.
- Turn over. Fold the flap down.
- For the strap, poke two holes in each corner of the bag and pass the end of the webbing through the holes. Fold the raw end back onto the strap. Wrap the strap around the raw end and sew into place hiding the end in the strap.
- Fringe twist the ends in groups of 4, to create 3 tassels in each stripe.
- Using the cotton fabric, sew a liner a little smaller than the bag itself. Leave enough room at the top to fold down leaving the raw edge between the liner and the bag. Whip stitch along the top edge of the bag to set the liner in place.
- For added decoration, take some buttons and sew them along the top of the bag following the middle seam of the fabric.