Gather 'round, friends, and let me tell you the story of a magic bag....
Once, there was a girl who set out to make an amigurumi octopus lady. She gathered her yarn and hooks and set to work.
It was soon apparent that things.... well, things weren't going so well for the girl.
The yarn had become tangled together into one big knot, her stitches were frayed and uneven, her hook had snapped--except for spontaneous yarn combustion, everything that could go wrong DID go wrong. The girl was determined, but after several hours of untangling, crocheting, and starting over again and again, the mess just got worse. It looked as though her amigurumi octopus lady would never come to be.
Then it hit her:
Yes, you're never alone with the Magic "Mama Will Fix It" bag! With the fires of determination in her eyes, Mama takes your failed project--
--and in a matter of a few frenzied minutes, she works her magic. As Mama's face softened into an expression of pleased serenity, the girl looked into the bag. What's this?
It's the octopus lady!
Thanks, Mama!
Okay, now that our little play is over.... <3
This is my entry for the contest, the "Mama Will Fix It" project bag. I'm constantly transporting WIPs back and forth from home to my mom's house, and when this challenge was announced, it seemed like a good opportunity to make myself a cute (and big!) bag to carry my stuff.
The first thing I had to do was make the pattern. I found the images I wanted to use and took their resolution down to a workable size--54 by 74 pixels for the front and back panels. Then I had to reduce the number of colors to a workable number--16--lemme tell ya, this bag was a great stashbuster!
It was only after all this that I actually learned to do tunisian crochet. I picked it up pretty quick thanks to Youtube! Each stitch was one pixel of the pattern.
(This was my very first time doing tunisian crochet, and when I started I didn't have the right kind of hook and no money, so I carved a hook out of a dowel rod, which I used for the entirety of the "fire eyes" panel--you've got no idea how proud of myself I was
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Anyway. The front and back panels took about four days of work each, due to the amount of color changes in the piece. (I wish I had gotten a pic of the back of the panel--it was a mess! It took around four hours EACH PANEL to weave in all the ends!)
The front panel, featuring FIERY DETERMINATION Mama. My favorite of Mamas
The back panel depicting "pleased" Mama. (The Mama doll was my project after finishing the bag. I had worked so long and so hard on the bag that when I finished it, I had this weird separation anxiety. I funneled that anxiety into making a Mama doll.
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The sides, which say "Don't worry" on one side and "Mama will fix it" on the other, were mercifully very quick to crochet up.
The strap is two long skinny rectangles of single crochet that I crocheted together. I lined the bag with a pink and cream polka dotted upholstery fabric.
All in all, the bag took nearly two and a half weeks of working every day to complete. It was entirely worth it!
Just remember... You're never alone with the Magic "Mama Will Fix It" bag
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