Bagalong off to a cracking start

Its been amazing to see the interest in joining together in this bagalong! I have to admit that I never planned to do such a thing – the idea just popped into my head on Saturday morning and then sort of popped into an Instagram and Facebook post. At that point I just imagined that maybe half a dozen people would be joining in.

Its a bit more than that and I’m thrilled. I spent quite a lot of time yesterday getting the blog pages and posts ready and planning my colour schemes and squares and setting up a Facebook group – Blogalong with Crafternoon Treats.

Loads of you have wanted to join and we already have over 200 members! Fantastic…

Some of you have been asking about my colours schemes and what bags I am going to make exactly so that you could order the yarn to do the same. This has caught me a bit on the hop to be honest, but I am catching up with you and getting organised.

My bagalong granny stash bag

This will be another 12 inch (30cm) square bag, lined with short handles similar to my first one.

I am doing some things differently from my original – so it will be a new improved version:

• In my first bag I used a 6mm hook; this time I’ve gone down to a 5mm hook for a tighter square.
• To make it big enough, that means I’ve added 2 more rounds to my square – so 12 not 10.
• I won’t be using cord for the handle – I am trying out a new method and will be telling you more about that in a later post.

Colours of my stash bag

I’ve done one complete square and most of a second so far and I’m going for a coastal seaside colour scheme. That means 10 balls of Stylecraft Special Chunky in these colours:

• Denim
• Midnight
• Cloud blue
• Silver
• Aspen
• Cream
• Parchment
• Gold
• Copper
• Camel

If you want to make the same bag, or a very similar one, you will need probably half a ball of each of these colours at most. If you are purchasing, don’t worry about having yarn left – towards the end of the bagalong I’ll be posting about some other projects that will be perfect for using up what you have remaining.

I want the bag to be striking and unusual so I’m using the sandy shades and the blue sea shades separately in two squares and then mingled for the other three squares.

This is my latest square, still in progress. From the centre I’ve used: camel, cream, gold, camel, copper, parchment, gold, cream, copper, parchment – and will then be adding camel and gold for the final two rounds.

Below is my completed first square (see the details on how I made it here),which incorporates all the blue and grey sea colours in my chunky palette:

My overall plan

What I have in mind is to use these two panels opposite each other in the bag, with the two squares between and the base a mixture of the sea and sand colours.

I haven’t made the final decision on the joining colour yet – but I am leaning towards either parchment or silver as a good neutral for the handle.

Getting inspired by your squares

My next post will give more details about the smaller project bag I’m also making. This will have only 8 rounds and I probably won’t line it but will pop my different projects into pretty cotton drawstring bags so that I can use it when I’m out and about.

In the meantime, I thought you would like to see some of the gorgeous squares that people in the bagalong group on Facebook have done already – so many brilliant ideas are coming from stash busting! The names of the makers are on the photos and the more squares will be added to the Album on my Crafternoon Treats Facebook page as I see them.

Enjoying the bagalong?

This pattern and tutorial is free and you can use it to make bags for yourself or for others. You can sell your bags but it would be nice to credit me for the design. Please do not take the photos or the text of the tutorials and publish them, even with a link back to my site, as that is against UK Copyright Law. Pinning my pics on Pinterest is fine – as long as you pin from here.

If you find the tutorial useful please consider donating £2 to the Just Giving page below – I raised over £10800 for Marie Curie Cancer Care recently and I want to keep up the good work!!

You can text a donation to 70070 adding YARN55 and then your donation amount if you prefer xxxxxxxxx