Mama's got a brand new (felt) bag

In between selling our current house, buying our future house and planning Mr Canuck's 36 day work trip, the crafting-life has fallen by the wayside.

Egged on by my caregivers request for a donated item for a charity auction I started to seek inspiration.  It didn't take long to find this picture circulating on the ol' crafty sites:

I knew as soon as I saw this picture from the cover of this beautiful looking new book, that I was going to use this bag as my inspiration.

I haven't worked with felt before, but it's such an appealing product that I thought I'd go for it.  Plus, I've recently found a bunch of different coloured felts at the thrift store.  (Fun and cheap!! woowoo!)

Now, many sites, like Craft, are featuring write-ups of this book and a link to a free pattern for this bag.  I'm all about the free patterns, but I have no patience.  So, I took a look at it and then 'drafted' my own onto the back of a discarded Shreddies box.  Yeah... I'm classy like that.

I'm sure it's not really too far off from the measurements of actual pattern, but I couldn't say for sure.  And guessing at that bottom piece was a fun experiment.  (My point?:  Just print out the darn pattern).

Anyhoo... so taking this image and blending in my head with those cute Swedish painted, wooden horses:

...I came up with this:

It's all hand-done except where I reinforced the double-layer of felt.  (I used Heat'n Bond to adhere the two layers together, but it isn't so great with felt... the extra stitches just backed it up).

I taught myself the blanket stitch for this with a great little video on youtube.  What a world we live in!  Can you imagine ol' Laura Ingalls searching youtube for a tute on handstitching.  Hi-larious.

My husband wonders at my sanity to spend so much time on a project headed for an auction, but as I always tell him "it's the process, not the product".  So off it goes, assuming she likes it and wants to add it to the benefit.

That's all from here.  I'm seriously starting another one of these bags right away.  I think they are too fun and I have a feeling that a certain sister of mine will love it's wonky charm.  Right?