Projects Revisited – Festive Wine Bag

As is fitting after a new year has begun, we tend look back and reflect on the previous year or in our case, a previous post from five years ago. This was only the second post in our Yearning to… series

In 2009, Melissa Ludden our Yearning to Weave author, made the popular Festive Wine Bag project.

We were pleasantly surprised when someone e-mailed us to show us her rendition of the bags.

Patricia, a handweaver in Arizona took Melissa’s pattern originally designed for the rigid heddle loom and converted them into directions for her Mighty Wolf loom.

She kept the colorways the same, as she was able to find the right colorways of the yarns used in Melissa’s original project.

Thanks to her detailed notes, Patricia was able to shed some personal light on the project from her point of view.

“a)  I used a total of 4 skeins of the Lamb’s Pride (with no leftover yarn).  My warp was 140” (3.9 yds) – next time, I would use a 3.75 yard warp.  I ended up with about 5 more inches of usable warp (17.8 yds) that could have been woven.

b)  It turned out I was about 1/2″ (2 yds) short of Lamb’s Pride for weft (which would not have been the case if I had shortened my warp a bit).  Knowing this was about to happen as I was weaving bag #5, I added an inch to the Karabella section.  Thus, one bag is slightly taller – that’s fine, some wine bottles are, too!

c)  I used 89 yds of the Karabella (out of the 222 yard skein); without the warp problem above, I probably would have used 85 yds.

d)  Melissa’s instructions did not have a measurement for the top hem.  I folded down the top edge 1/2″ and then folded it again, per the instructions.  The end result looks very much like her photo of the project.

e)  The article did not include a measure for the seam allowance; I used a scant 1/4″.

f)  Melissa noted the hemstitched section was “~1 inch,” using a 1″x18″ cardboard separator.  However, since I was trying to keep the total project of 5 bags to come in at no more than 800 yards (4 skeins) of Lamb’s Pride, I used a 7/8″ cardboard separator (hedging my bets!).

g)  There was no indication of what size (width) or length (total or per bag) of ribbon.  I used 7/8″ double-faced satin ribbon, at 30″ of ribbon per bag (4.25 yds).”

Thank you Patricia for such a detailed report of how you made these bags to suit your needs!
For just under $60 she was able to make 5 of these wine bottle bags, which brings us to about $12 dollars per bag! What a deal!