Happy Birthday Colleen!

My sister, Colleen, turns another year older today.  I won’t divulge the year of her birth, but she is older than I am.  I am very anxious for her to open her gift I sent as I have been wanting to share it with all of you too.  The post office reported to me that she received it on Saturday, but as of yet I don’t think she has ripped it open!  I’m pretty sure she won’t be peeking here before she finally opens her gift so I will go ahead and post about it now.

Colleen is a prolific knitter and has this as her tag line on Facebook, “I would like to be nominated for the Detroit Red Wings next knitting lady position.”  For those that don’t know, the Detroit Red Wings (DRW) are a National Hockey League (NHL) team.  I wanted to help her realize that goal so I decided to make her a tote bag for her knitting and I wanted to use fabric that would reflect her desire to represent the Red Wings.  Unfortunately I discovered that the NHL is the only professional league that doesn’t license their logos for anyone else to use so there was no way I could get fabric with the DRW logo on it. My quilting and applique skills aren’t that great yet so creating my own logo was out of the question too.

Big Red Tote with Knitters Accessories

As an alternative I found a beautiful deep red fabric and used that as the body of the bag. I had a great set of fat quarters I picked up at Joann’s that coordinated well with the red and decided to use them as the accent pieces on the bag. It is a large bag with two big pockets on the outside and 3 pockets on the inside. When I finished the bag I thought it needed a bit more so I searched the web to see what knitters used to carry their stuff. The first thing I found was a pattern for a knitting needle roll.

Needle Roll - Opened (top) - Rolled up (bottom)

The picture shows the same needle roll. The top is what it looks like opened with some items that might be stored in it (I didn’t have any knitting needles so I had to substitute a couple of pencils to simulate the needles – ha!) and the bottom picture shows what it looks like all rolled up.

Yarn bags

The next item I discovered that knitters like to use are yarn bags. They are just a simple lined bag that is 12 inches high with a drawstring at the top. She can put her skein of yarn in the bag and pull the yarn out from the top. It keeps the yarn all neat and tidy while she is working with it (and might keep the cats from unraveling them too!). Luckily I found another pack of the same fat quarters so I was able to use the same fabric for these too.

Zippered Clutch

The last item was a late addition that Colleen requested. I made similar clutches for Colleen and her girls as Christmas gifts. For Colleen’s I used Christmas fabric so she felt she couldn’t/shouldn’t keep using it until next holiday season. When we chatted recently she remarked about how much she and the girls love this small bag because you can put just what you need in them for a quick trip to the store and you don’t have to lug around your big purse. She also let me know that her birthday was approaching (as if I didn’t already know) and wouldn’t that make a nice gift. Little did she know what I already had completed (see all of the items above!). Adding this nice clutch to the stash was no problem and as always a pleasure to do.

I am really enjoying making bags and doing other crafty things like that. It was fun to learn what accessories a knitter might need for their hobby. If Colleen passes on any pictures of her knitting creations I will see if I can share them here, too.

Happy Crafting!