finished object friday: project bags!

I've been seeing gorgeous images of  zip bags all over the internet for months- especially on The Black Hole of Productivity (otherwise known as Pinterest). There are even easy-to-follow free tutorials for making them, like this one from Truly Myrtle.

Meanwhile, my knitting projects have been crammed into flat zip-top pouches that are decidedly uninspiring. There always seems to be a knitting needle sticking out where a certain ill-mannered feline can chew off the tip. This thin pretext is all I require to justify the purchase of more fabric.

One stop on the great Tokyo yarn and fabric crawl was Takashimaya, an amazing department store in Ginza with $100 mangos in the basement grocery store, and an epic craft supply floor upstairs. They had 1/2 meter rolls of light-weight coated cotton that were not to be resisted.

Coated fabrics are a great choice for knitting project bags for the same reason they're recommended for kid's backpacks - the coating prevents pointy objects like knitting needles and sharpened pencils from poking through.  If I'm lucky, they'll also be chew-proof, or at least chew-resistant. I also like that they're waterproof (except for the zipper), although they were really tricky to press.

The linings are from my stash - two dupionni silks, and one brocade. The zippers are also stash. If I had it to do over again, I would use regular zippers instead of invisible zippers. The zippers are a smidge harder to open that I'd like, but that's my own fault - I was too lazy to go to the trimmings market when I had the right colors in the right lengths and could start sewing immediately.

This is mentioned in the tutorial, but I want to stress that you really do need to use interfacing for a great-looking result.

Did you finish anything this week?