Felted Lunch Bag

Since it was school vacation last week we were downtown Boston and took a detour on the way home. We visited the Fabric Place in Woburn. It is a store I used to shop years ago when I lived in Beverly, MA. It has always had a great selection of yarns. I wanted to start work on a felted bag for my daughter. She is interested in making a bag to use as a lunch bag. The lunch bag in the book “Knit One, Felt Too” inspired her. She chose the yarn colors herself. Shh…. I’m hoping to finish the project as a birthday present. We chose 100% wool from South America. Most of the books I read about Felting suggested using Lamb’s Pride or Cascade 220. My local yarn shops don’t carry these brands. We chose Arucania “Nature Wool” because of the bright colors. Since, this brand wasn’t mentioned in any of the books I have I needed to make gauge swatches.

I’m still new to felting so I bought an extra skein to fool around with. I decided to make two sets of gauge swatches. Since some of the patterns that I have read require knitting double stranded I chose to knit a double strand gauge swatch on US size 15 needles and a second gauge swatch on US size 11 needles using a single strand of yarn. The other small test I made while knitting the swatches was to change the knit pattern. I chose to knit the bottom part of each swatch using a garter stitch and the top part using the stockinette stick pattern.

The needles I used to make the gauge swatches were much larger than the yarn’s recommended US size of 4-7 needles for the yarn gauge of 18 stitches for a 4-inch swatch. Most felting patterns recommend generating very loose, soft fabric before the felting begins. I believe the swatches I made fit this requirement.
This shows the swatch before washing. The single strand knit is on the right. Notice how much bigger it is than the double strand knitting swatch on the left.
This is how the swatches look after one wash cycle. Notice how much the single strand swatch (right) shrank already compared to the double strand knit (left). I wanted less stitch definition so I put it for a second pass though the wash.

Final swatching! It felted nicely.


Observations
The single strand swatch feeling is thinner and more floppy than the double strand knit swatch. I would use this weight if I were to make a felted vest. It feels more like a thick fabric. There is a slightly thicker feeling to the garter stitch area but it is less of a transition than I would have thought. The double strand knit swatch is a much thicker. It feels like a good potholder or trivet type thickness. The felted fabric is more sturdy; it would work well for a bottom of a bag. My daughter’s first instinct was to choose the thicker swatch to make her bag with but I’m still undecided. I might want to line the bag because we will be putting food in and out of it. If that is the case I’m thinking the lighter weight (single strand knit) might be better.

Gauge Swatch Information for a 4” x 4” square