I'm a knitty designer! Oh yes!!

Wow I am so excited! I am finally allowed to share my shortlisted design for the Wool and the Gang GangLabs competition!!

*woah there! I hear you say. What competition?*

rewind to mid-April...



Wool and the Gang sent an email out to everyone who had applied to be a gangmaker inviting them to join their new initiative GangLabs. The first design mission was to design this summer's must-have bag using their recycled mix tape yarn and mini bag clasp.  We had two weeks to knit up a swatch and submit our design ideas. Shortlisted designs would then have to be made up ready for voting on their facebook page. The most popular bag gets made into a WATG Knit Kit and will be available for sale worldwide (and earn the designer a little moolah and many kudos points into the bargain ).

One of the rules of the competition was that there was to be absolutely no sharing of pictures on any social networks prior to the final design being offered for voting. No blogging, Tweeting, Instagramming or Facebooking. This was probably the hardest bit for me - you know how I LOVE to share!

I confess I got a bit carried away and came up with not one but FOUR ideas - two of which I submitted to WATG.

The Basket Case Clutch design sketch

The Basket Case Clutch swatch

The Zebra Crossing Clutch design sketch

The Zebra Crossing Clutch swatch

As you can imagine, I was over the moon to get the 'Congratulations your design has been shortlisted' email - the Gang loved the 'Zebra Crossing Clutch'!

Then came the tricky bit of turning my design swatch and sketch into an actual bag...
The Zebra Crossing Clutch is knitted 'sideways' with a garter stitch band at either end of the rows with are folded over to enclose the clasp. The stripes are knitted in stocking stitch using the fair isle method of colour knitting - carrying the yarn across the back of the work. This makes a double thickness fabric and creates a sturdy bag.

I think it turned out pretty good...

Then the even trickier bit of trying to get a decent photograph of finished bag being modelled by myself (it involved propping camera on wheelie bin, setting a ten second timer then running up path and adopting pose, holding pose until camera clicked then checking picture, cringing lots and doing it all over again. About 20 times!) Thankfully they didn't use the final picture on the voting page and just used the bag itself on plain background (phew).

So here's the thing...

Now my bag is up there with 11 other fab designs waiting for the general public - that's you guys - to go and vote for your favourite. As I said the bag with the most votes gets made up into a kit you will be able to purchase from the Wool and the Gang  website. *excited much*   I would really appreciate it if you could just take a moment to visit the VOTING page on WATG's facebook and vote for my Zebra Crossing Clutch (voting closes at midnight June 24th 2014)

I had such fun playing around with ideas, drafting designs and knitting swatches, not to mention producing the final bag - which I love and I know I will use this summer! - that I don't really mind if I don't actually win (yeah, right).

All the bags are awesome and I think it would be very hard to pick out one outstanding design but I can still keep everything crossed that I get lucky....