DIY - Knitted Peg Bag

Hi Everyone!  This is the first post of its nature. I am going to be sharing with you all my Do It Yourself Projects that I finish every now and then, even though time to work on such projects is rather limited with the new lifestyle. Today I am going to show you my newly finished Knitted Peg Bag which I made from scratch.  For those of you who are familiar with knitting and basic crochet, this piece is going to be a piece of cake to create.

The idea for this peg bag came with the first laundry that I had to make. I didn't have anywhere to hold the pegs and it was a nightmare running around with the things and throwing them everywhere in the washroom. I bought myself some plastic baskets to carry the laundrey in and I got myself a rather big basket with handles and everything, to keep the pegs in but it was nowhere close to handy. Then I remembered that my mum hand a peg bag that was bought ages ago featuring owls and was made of canvas. The first time I went to visit I got a good look at it and decided to imitate the pattern but using knitting rather than canvas fabric and here is what I made!

So for those who with to make their own version of this, you will need the following:

A hanger, possibly straight. I used one that is made to hold skirts and removed it's clips to make it straight. Knitting needles, knitting yarn of choice, ribbon (if you wish), crochet hook, sewing needle and thread matching your knitting yarn, scissors and patience.

There you can see the knitted fabric that I worked. I used various patterns to identify the parts and also incorporated a pattern with eyelets so that I can thread a ribbon through them.

First thing you need to cast on enough stitches to cover the whole length of the hanger and a little extra. Then decide on the pattern you are going to knit, you can do anything from a basic purl stitch all over or a knit stitch all over. A little search online will give you a vast library of stitches. I started off with popcorn stitch and worked enough to cover the height of the hanger. Then I worked an eyelet pattern for the ribbon to go through it and went back to the popcorn stitch all the way to match the height that was already worked. This will eventually form the pouch holding the hanger.  I used another pattern, the wavy one that can be seen on the right hand side of the picture above, to cover the length from the hanger pouch to the eventual opening of the bag and then changed again to a triangle pattern made with knit stitch and popcorn stitch as you can see on the left hand side above.  After that I changed again to a few edging rows in popcorn stitch with an eyelet pattern so that they match the patterns of the hanger pouch.  It was all worked using the same right side all over. The trick is in remembering where to fold and sew.

When I finished all the knitting, I threaded in the ribbon through both eyelet patterns, making sure to keep the ends on the wrong side of the work. I secured these ends with a matching thread and gave them a few sewing stitches.  Here is a close up of the ribbon:

The next thing I did was to find the centre where I wanted to fold in order to create a pouch for the hanger and inserted the hook of the said hanger in the middle. I then started crocheting from  one end to the other enclosing the hanger in beetween. Here is how it looks when done:

Next I looked for all the knots and threaded the loose ends so that they don't show.  Finally I worked out the fold for the actual bag and crocheted the side ends together to form the bag. It is important to not crochet the horizontal end otherwise you won't be able to put anything in!

This is the final product. For a little extra touch I tied up a ribbon to the hanger like this:

That was the first Project that is useful for the house chores :) All in pink because I love pink and girly stuff and knitted because I love to play with yarn.

I hope you enjoyed this post and please let me know what you think. I am sorry if my explaining wasn't so good but if anyone has a difficulty, please feel free to ask, I will be more than happy to help! If anyone wants the patterns to the stitches I used, I will post them in another post for everyone to be able to follow and adapt them to their own projects. They are very simple in fact and you only need to know a few basic things.

Well, that's it for now, I have to go prepare hubby's lunch for tomorrow!

See you soon,

Saranghae,

Pauline