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Upcycled, Crochet Handbag, work in progress

Working on a crochet bag made from unraveled thrift store sweaters.
Working on a crochet bag made from unraveled thrift store sweaters.

I am in desperate need of two things.

  • A new handbag/purse
  • A reduction to the monstrous size of my yarn stash

To kill two birds with one stone, I set out to make myself a new bag. I don’t buy bags from the store for myself anymore. I enjoy making them.

I also have a stash of sweaters that I get from the thrift store just for the yarn. It is much cheaper to buy a sweater’s worth of yarn for $5 or less and take it apart, than to buy the yarn new. I look for interesting colors, fiber blends and yarn weights and I enjoy the hunt at the thrift store.

This bag is made from two different sweaters. The brown lower part is from an acrylic sweater that had two colors of yarn for a variegated look, and the tan color is also two-strands of wool yarn in two different colors.

I am using the most basic crochet stitch of all – the single crochet – to put this together. The base was crocheted first, and then I crocheted around it to begin working in the round. Easy-peasy.

Stay tuned for the finished product.