African Flower Bag for my Elle

We travelled to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, to celebrate my daughter's university graduation. As part of her gift, I crocheted for Elle, my eldest, a very bright bag in which to carry... well... whatever she wants! You see, she graduated on Thursday and she is such a bright and hard-working young woman, she graduated with both major and minor degrees and won the highest medal of achievement in BOTH her programs! I'm sorry but I MUST brag about this! I'm, like, beaming with pride over here! She was so happy and worked so tremendously hard, she deserves every inch of those medals.

Congratulations Elle, you amaze us everyday! Here is Elle ordering sushi with the bag happily slung over her shoulder...

This is my first actual crocheting project. And the design is my own concoction. It had to be a simple bag because crocheting is so new to me. I felt this design was the simplest way to use the African flowers.

And here is a picture of the completed bag!

What I did?

For the Bag Body:

• I made 17 African Flowers. I joined the 17 flowers to make the body of the bag.
• I created the shape of the bag by joining the flowers into 1 long row of 6 flowers against 1 short row of 5 flowers against a final row of 6 flowers.
• Once these rows were joined, I single-crocheted 1 row around the whole piece.
• I then added a row of ten stitches in eight of the 10 side indentations. The row went like so: 2 sc, 1 hdc, 4 dc, 1 hdc, 2 sc. I did this to increase the width of the bag in those areas.
• I left the 2 middle indentations from the long sides of the piece as is.
• I then folded the piece in two and single-crocheted the edges shut to make a bag.
• I lined the bag with a simple satin bag.

For the strap

• Ch6. *5 sc. Ch 1, turn*.
• I repeated this many many times until the strap was the desired length.
• I lined the strap with a satin piece.
• I sewed the lined strap to the bag.

I was done!

More from the Halifax trip later!