I recently completed this felted crochet rose garden bag for my mother’s birthday:

using this pattern from Red Heart yarns.

While I enjoyed the process of felting and loved the resulting bag, I wondered how an unfelted version of the bag would look.

Using a 3.5mm hook and Red Heart Super Saver worsted weight yarn, I set to work to find out.

Making the body of the bag was a fairly straightforward process. The one change I made was that I omitted rows 33 and 34 as I found the bag to be deep enough at that point. Here is the result:

The straps were a little trickier. While I followed the directions for how to make them, I did not follow the directions for length. It was a little like Goldilocks tries making purse straps.

The first length was too long, the second length was too short, and the third length (84 double crochet stitches long) was just right:

Then there was the matter of the curliques. I decided that the spring green was too bright and the paddy green was too dark, so I used both in equal measure:

and then I did the same with the six leaves:

When it came time to make the roses, I decided that I would not limit myself to four colors and chose to work with six instead. I used Red Heart Super Saver dark orchid, pretty ‘n pink, bright yellow, pumpkin, turqua, and delft. I also increased the number of small roses from four to six:

and decreased the number of large roses from eight to six:

Now all that’s left is for me to get out my Clover chibi and assemble all these parts.

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