Looking For A Fairytale Ending

Once upon a time I had a single skein of plushy-soft boucle wool. It was mostly beige with soft pastel blotches and I kept it in my petting basket for a long time, trying to decide what to make with it. There was probably enough to make a nice scarf but since I don't wear scarves I decided to make a simple rectangular drop stitch wrap with it. It was a perfect size! I could wrap it around my shoulders and secure it with a shawl pin. There was nothing "extra" hanging anywhere and I wore it many many cool winter mornings  in my office. One day, one of my teenagers wasn't feeling well. As a loving maternal gesture I wrapped "my" shawl around her shoulders as she bundled down on the couch and spent the day in front of the TV. As a loving daughter gesture, when she felt better, she decided to do me a favor and do some laundry. Surprise! She included my shawl with the load... need I say more? I found it when I went to load the dryer. My once soft, slubby, smooshy wrap was now a stiff, dense blob. If it hadn't been for the dropped stitches in the pattern I think it would have truly been cardboard.

I think a big part of my disappointment is I am not a prolific knitter, especially of shawls. I SO love them - and have several on needles in baskets - but they require so much apt attention to a chart they are seldom my project-of-choice on the average day. Now, my "perfect" shawl was no more! *sigh!*
What to do? Improvise!! I was browsing through the local thrift store and found several fabric belts (if you can believe it) in almost matching colors to my shawl and a little light bulb went on, "I'll make a bag!"

Both belts were D-ring so I ripped out their stitching and took the metal tie ends off using small pliers. Since the striped woven belt was the toughest I thought I would use it for the gusset insert. I cut the shawl in half and marked the center bottom of each piece and the middle of the woven belt. Using my trusty sewing machine I straight stitched them together, starting at the center bottom (and the middle of the belt) and stitched around the corner and up to the top four times. There was just enough belt to fold over the D-ring - perfect! Then, when I was satisfied with the fit I zig-zagged the edges. I attached the flower-embroidered fabric belt to the top of the D-ring.

I folded over the top edge of the felted shawl and stitched it flat and I was done. It became the perfect storage bag for my laptop! Completely unexpected, but at least some consolation for losing my favorite shoulder wrap!



Posted by Gloria Patre at 6/24/2010 4:24 PM
Categories: Other Projects
Tags: felted shawl felted laptop bag
 

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