I keep having life interfering with my felting time, so I have not had much time to felt bigger things lately, but it is that time of the year when we need to start planning for Christmas gifts!

I would like to look with you at a wet felting project that I made almost exactly one year ago, when I had a bit more time to create bigger things that could serve as nice gifts: a big carry-all bag that I gave to my friend. She has kids and kids have activities to go to, where they need to have plenty of stuff, from towels and swimming suits to snacks and water bottles. Felt seems to me very good for that kind of carry-alls, because it is germ and water resistant,and generally life resistant as well.

First of all, I was thinking about size: I was going to use some big bamboo handles that I had bought at a good price, so its size and shape should be the right one for the handles.

I cut a resist from bubblewrap and put my big handles against it to gauge the right size and shape, always taking shrinkage of the final felt into account.

I wanted to have an internal lining to the bag, thinking about future rough use, as I was planning to make the felt with my usual Merino wool, which is not the toughest of the wool types (but I just love it, and I will use it as much as possible).

I took out my stash of scarves for felting and found one that I liked for lining the bag and that I thought will felt in very well from past experience, as I hate hand sewing and I wanted to be able to nuno felt the fabric into the wool to give it more structure: I think that it must be a wool based fabric, although I do not know for sure, as it did not have a label when I bought it at a charity shop. It is a cream scarf with teal edges with tassels.

I planned to have two internal pockets, one on each side of the bag, so I laid out my pockets before laying out the lining.

Then I put the first lining fabric shape and started on the serious job of laying my first layer of Merino wool.

I covered the laid out wool with a piece of bubble wrap, so that a pocket would remain…well, that was the plan, but I did not think it properly and the bubble wrap was a tad too big, and the pocket did not come out as I wanted properly attached to the side of the bag, so I had to work on it a lot more than I was expecting!

Anyway, then I put my lining on the pocket and started laying out the whole side of my bag.

Now, to the actual laying out of my bag!

I wanted a neutral background, as I was planning to use plenty of colours as decoration, so I opted for a lighter grey Merino wool, of which I had plenty just at that moment, due to a lucky mistake in ordering (I had ordered it twice! Never mind, I used it a lot afterwards.).

Fine, back to work: I laid out my layers starting from the edges of the fabric shape and then going towards the center. I chose a plain horizontal-vertical pattern for my layers, nothing fancy, and I laid out my wool a bit thicker than I would in finer objects such as scarves.

Having laid my wool pretty thickly, I decided to stop there, and to go on and wet, soap and lightly rub the first side, to avoid having hidden dry areas once the second side was on.

Then, I turned over the first side and started working on the second side.

Right, where were we? the second pocket of course! Now, I paused for a while, trying to figure out that one as well: I always have some head scratching when trying to work backwards, I always feel pretty dense, because it takes me ages to work it out, and I often make mistakes.

Then, of course, I had to put the second small rectangular piece of bubble wrap for the second pocket to open…well, guess what (picture embarassed face palm here) I forgot! So, basically, afterwards I was looking for a non-existing bubble wrap inside the felt, then glanced at the chair and had a laughing moment of recognition (oh, oh, what are you doing there?? you should be in my bag! I have been looking for you for ten minutes, torturing and puncturing the side!). I mean, there must be something with me and pockets, I do not know, I always have to pay extra attention to their crafting, and still most of the time something goes wrong and I have to rework them at the end.

Well, I blithely went on with the cream lining fabric, folding on it all the edges from the other side, so as not to lay my edges too thick with layers from the second side.

I added my layers of Merino wool mirroring the other side and careful not to put too much wool on the edges.

And then, the best part of all, decoration time!

I had already decided that I wanted colours colours colours. OK, but which ones? I took out the brightest from my stash, and tried a few combinations until I found the ones that I liked best for this project. I decided to lay out wisps of the various colours in a modern horizontal pattern on this second side. I reasoned that my big carry-all bag would have needed a bigger bottom, so I decided to leave the bottom third of the bag without decoration. I left my bright lines go over the left and right edges only a bit, because I was planning to change decoration pattern on the other side (because, why not?)

I wet and soaped and lightly rubbed this second side and turned over the bag to decorate the other side as well.

Wetting, soaping and rubbing accomplished on this side as well, I started quite a while of rolling on all directions.

When I stopped after a bit to open up the pockets after I felt the wool had started to shrink, I found out that one of the pockets was not properly attached and the other..was totally attached! Argh, pockets!

Never mind, I got into recovery mode, and managed to salvage the badly attached one, by first needle-felting its edges, then also stitching them with hidden stitches.

I finished the rolling and felting, trying to go on fulling a little bit longer than my usual, because I wanted a good proper felt.

Lastly, I stitched the bamboo handles on it, using the two flaps that I had designed into the resist for that purpose.

I put a small bag of Christmas needle felted baubles in it and gifted it to my friend, who was very surprised by finding it on her door one evening right before Christmas holidays.

I enjoyed the making of this bag, and especially the gifting of it, and I hope that my friend made good use of it.

I hope that it will inspire your coming Christmas season gifts as well.