Wine-o Carrier-o

I finished embellishing the wine carrier, and now I lurve it. Yes, I said lurve, like Celine Dion. And no, I don't like her one bit. Deal with it.

It took several tries at making the pieces and then assembling. Here it is finished (click to make big):



I remembered a felted, embellished wine bag in the book Knit One, Felt Too, and got it out to take a looksee. Problem was, it used "fleece" to make the felt balls for the grapes (which I didn't have), and a square of knitted fabric, felted, and cut to make the leaf. I *could* have done that bit and needle felted a vine on top, but I wouldn't have been able to needle felt the leaf to the piece of the vine to the rest of the bag, due to the bag not being wool, so I decided not to go to the trouble. Instead, I used the pattern for the leaf to cut a piece out of regular craft store felt, which I "veined" with a black sharpee. I glued this on with some fabic glue, then set about making the grapes.

I had some purple wool leftover from a bag I had made, so I set out to crochet a grape and "hand-felt" it. To hand-felt, I rubbed it between my hands under water as hot as I could stand with a squirt of dishwasher soap... roughing it up while trying not to drop it down the garbage disposal. Problem was, my first attempt turned out about the size of a plum. So, I made a smaller one (which I stuffed with a wee bit of polyfil), and it turned out to be the rightish size. Make about 10 more of them, all hand-felted, and then glued them on to the bag several times with a combination of fabric and tacky glue. Finally, for the vines I decided I wanted something sparkly and strung a combination of green colored (different greens) "E" beads onto some wire, and glued the vine down to the bag. What you have as a result, is what you see. I surely do like it! It's just about complete... all it needs now is to be FILLED ;)