On The Crochet Menu: Another FBB

What's on the crochet menu today?  Another FBB (Fat Bottom Bag), one I hope to sell very soon.  Many ladies are presenting a great interest in the bags since my friend - who goes to the hospital for treatments for Lupus - brought her FBB I made her to the hospital and the nurses there saw it and wanted to see more of them.  The nurses told my friend they would like to have a FBB like hers, proving my point in my previous post that word of mouth is the best method of advertising.

Here's the latest addition to my FBB inventory (below) and following this post is a quick (and easy) photo tutorial on how I made the handles for it.  Let me know what you think in the comments below, your comments are always welcome!

I made the flowers and leaves using size 3 crochet thread and a size 3 steel crochet hook.  I tend to like the thread flowers better than worsted weight but it really depends on each individual bag that I make.  Each one has a personality of its own.

By luck the lining I chose matches the thread I used for the flowers perfectly.  The purples and blues are really pretty against the black body of the bag.  I found this material at Jo Ann's in the designer area of the fabric section.








I was disappointed in the handles at Jo Ann's that day and was shocked at the prices of them.  They've gone up quite a bit and my little cheapy stand by handle - the unfinished rattan round handles  that were $2.99 are no longer available there.  Only the finished rattan handles were there and priced at $5.99!  I wasn't about to pay that much for a rattan handle so I decided to follow my boyfriend's suggestion, to look for cords or braids in the trims section and make my own handles.  Below is what I did to make a 3/8" cording work as handles for this bag.  If anyone has any better ideas about how to make handles, please do comment below!  Anyway, here's what I did:

 Before cutting your twisted cording wrap scotch tape around the ends and cut in the middle of the tape so both ends of the cut are held in place and will not ravel.  I only purchased one yard of this cording for the handles at a couple bucks a yard.   I cut the cording in half and used half a yard for each handle.

To ensure the cording won't ravel, apply a good amount of glue to all ends and allow to dry well on waxed paper.
This will also make a barrier so when you sew the ends together the stitches won't pull through and come apart.

In a zig-zag pattern, using heavy duty thread and needle, sew the ends together.  Go all the way around the cording with your stitches so it doesn't wiggle with a gap or bend funny.  You won't be able to get the needle through the glue you applied earlier so just stitch on the other side of the glue barrier.  I enlarged the photo so you'd be able to see how I made the stitches for this.  It doesn't look very pretty but it serves a good purpose and it won't be seen when the bag is put altogether.

To make sure the corded handles didn't slip around while being used, exposing the ends stitched together, I tacked the stitched part of the handles to the bag's handle flaps smack dab in the middle of the flap. 

Now all that's left is to secure your handle flaps over the handles and you're done.



Please leave feedback in the comments below.  I appreciate your views and suggestions and conversation more than you know.  Thanks for stopping by, I hope I at least inspired you to make something beautiful today.

God bless you and God bless America - One Nation Under God... United we stand, divided we fall.
Ronald Regan said, "If we forget we are a nation under God, we'll be a nation gone under".