The Jemma Bag

Your kit comes with everything you'll need to make your masterpiece. In your kit you'll find;
 

• 3.5mm hook
• 1 ball of Cardigang Raffia in colour 1
• 2 balls of Cardigang Raffia in colour 2
• A darning needle
• Made by me tag

You also want to have a pair of scissors and a tape measure handy. 

💪 Remember learning a new skill can be a little challenging at first, and you’re bound to find yourself making some mistakes along the way. But as with learning anything, your brain and your hands slowly start to get the hang of it, muscle memory is created, and soon the thing you found tricky/daunting/scary is like second nature! 

BODY

STEP 1

Let's start with our foundation chain. 

💭 Try to make your chain stitches as evenly sized as possible. Don't pull the loops too tight because you'll struggle to work into these loops in your first row.

🤓 Chain 101: Make sure all the ‘V’s line up and are roughly the same size. 

GRANNY STRIPE

We're going to work in granny stripe. We make the granny stripe stitch by double crocheting in groups or clusters of stitches along a row. 

📹 Watch How to do a granny stripe

STEP 2

In our first row we're working into the chain, so you're going to insert your hook into the 4th chain from the hook. We only skip some stitches like this when we're working into the chain. So this is the only time in this pattern that you'll go into the 4th chain. 

Then do a double crochet into this stitch. This counts as your first cluster. We'll skip 2 chains and then do our first full cluster of double crochets. Do 4 double crochets into the same stitch. Repeat this sequence. 

🫣 Good news, this is the hardest row to complete because working into the chain isn't as easy as working into a row. So persist and things will get easier! 

STEP 3

Time to complete the second row - this row becomes the foundation for all other rows. 

💭 Your turning chain is what gives us the height to work the next row - they are very important! Without them, we'd be making a triangle!

💭 Make sure your hook is going in under both bars of the stitch. Your stitches will look like ‘V’s when looking at your work from the top down. 

STEP 4 to 10

More of the same my friend! 

🌈Changing colour

When you reach row 4 you'll do your first colour change. We change colours at the end of the row. All you'll do is yarn over with the new colour and complete the stitch with the new yarn. Then tie your ends together to secure them. We will be weaving the ends into the seams at the end. 

When you reach the end of step 10, fasten off and repeat for the second side. If your tension is good then both pieces should be the same size 😊

GUSSET & STRAPS

Awesome work! You've done a lot of the heavy lifting. Next, we're going to make the gusset of the bag. This piece is straightforward, we're just going to work in double crochet.

Ditto for the straps! 

SEWING TOGETHER

Time to put all our pieces together to make our beautiful bag. 

We start by seaming the gusset and once side piece together. Then we repeat for the second side. 

We'll use the front loop, back loop, slip stitch method to join our pieces. So grab your crochet hook, then follow the instructions in the video below to seam your bag together. 

🎬 Watch how to join horizontal seams

POM POMS