Crocheted African Flower Bag

Well I keep crocheting these African Flowers and the blanket is getting so heavy so I thought I better find a new use for them – so here’s my African Flower Handbag!

With my blanket I have joined-as-you-go with a different colour round each hexagon but for this project I outlined each one with a charcoal wool (this Sublime shade).
It means a double wall of charcoal but I really like the way the flowers pop out at you.

Can you see that odd shaped flower at the bottom of this ‘work in progress’? Yes it’s a Half African Flower! I’ve wanted to work out a pattern for this for a while now so that I can start the final round on my blanket (before it smothers me). In the end it was very straight forward, but I will print the pattern soon.

I used quite cheap plastic handles as it was all I could find in a hurry. Since then I have found some lovely wooden handles so I will have another bash and try to get a different shaped bag.

Here’s the other side. There are lots of different versions of African Flower bags on the Flickr group.

Here it is again, full of lovely wool and in the beautiful bright sunshine we have had this week (and today). The whole thing was made with a mixture of Sublime extra fine merino and Rooster almerino wool, all DK.

When I have something so obviously beautiful as this bag I like to take it all around the ‘farm’ and take photos of it in different locations, like hanging from the apple tree here. Sorry to sound so boastful but I just love this pattern – it’s not me, it’s the African Flowers!

This is to show you how the hexagons wrap around the bottom…

…and around the sides! It was made like a tube with no seams, just an inch of double crochet to join in the bottom corners. I love how you can do this with crochet!

One last look at this beauty *sigh*.
Thanks for your patience dear readers!