adam knits!

This pattern is for a very simple felted laptop bag that you can customize in so many different ways! You can choose your handles, shoulder strap and closure, and even needle felt on a design! I did my bag in black and felted on an Apple logo, like the picture below, but you can really do anything you want with it, so go wild!

Also, you’re free to do anything you want with this pattern, as long as it’s not for commercial use, and you promise to share your modifications freely. To help protect my copyright, I’m licensing this pattern under a Creative Commons license, click the graphic below to learn more.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike2.5 License.

Materials

For my bag I used Brown Sheep Company’s Top of the Lamb, which is a very nice wool for felting that comes in some nice earthy colors. But really any wool that felts well will work great for this bag, so feel free to pick a different wool with cool colors, such as Manos, or even something with a mohair blend for some sheen.

• Brown Sheep TOL [100% Worsted Weight Wool, 195 yards] -> Onyx (#210): 3 skeins
• US #10.5 needles (I used circs because this thing was a bit on the large side)

*Note:* I actually only used 2 skeins for both the guage swatch and the bag, but I would buy at least 3 if you plan to make the bag bigger, and make accessories such as handles, shoulder straps and pockets.

Size and Gauge

1. *Gauge Speech:* Ok, let me make my little speech on gauge here, because I believe that it is very important to this pattern, if you want the bag to be sized correctly for your laptop. You can ignore the gauge swatch if you want, but I can’t guarantee that the bag will come out the correct size. So be forewarned.

2. *Swatching:* So the first thing to do is make a guage swatch, so that you can determine your prefelted and postfelted gauge for the yarn that you choose. For my swatch I cast on 40 stitches and worked for 40 rows, which made the swatch 8″ wide by 10″ long.

3. *Reusing your swatch:* I would suggest making the swatch more like 8″ x 14″, because when that’s felted it should come out to a nice square size and you could recycle your swatch to sew on as a pocket. I didn’t think about this and my swatch is a size that’s not too conducive to being a pocket, but next time I would definitely make a longer swatch.

4. *Determining Gauge:* So once you’ve made your swatch, you need to mark it off with some thread or yarn that won’t felt. I used some cotton yarn and tied off a stitch, and then counted 20 stiches over and tied off another stitch. Don’t worry if it’s not on the same row, it doesn’t really matter. Then do the same thing row wise, and mark off 20 rows with two pieces of thread. Then measure the distance between these markers. Dividing your measured distance by 20 (or however many rows and stitches you marked off) will give you the row and stitch gauge for your knitting style and the yarn you’re using. If you get a decimal, just round up, it’ll give you a little big of wiggle room. My particular gauge was 4 stitches/in and 5 rows/in

5. *Felt Your Swatch:* Then, you need to felt your swatch according to the directions below. After you’ve done this, take your ruler and measure the distances between the threads that you marked in the previous step. Again, round up the measurements like before. Then you can determine your felted gauge, which was 5.5 stitches/in and 8 rows/in. (Sorry, I didn’t round up, but 5.5 is a nice number. If it was like 5.762 I would have rounded up). So you can see that it will shrink a lot more row wise than stitch wise.

6. *Calculating Pre-Felted and Post-Felted Dimensions:*Ok, now it’s time to put it all together!

The first thing to do is measure your laptop. This doesn’t have to be super accurate, so just round up to the next inch when you measure. Measure both the width and length, and then take the length and double it. This is how big your bag will be when it’s felted. For example: I measured my laptop at 13″ wide, by 11″ long. This means that my final felted piece should be 13″ x 22″ because you’ll fold it in half to make the bag. Next, you calculate how big your un-felted piece should be, from your gauge swatch measurements. This is simple math, but I don’t want to lose you, so follow closely.

Width Measurement: I took my felted stitch gauge (5.5 st/in) and multiplied it by the width calculated above (13″) to obtain 72 stitches. This is how many stitches I cast on.

Height Measurement: I then took my felted row gauge (8 rows/in) and multiplied it by the height calculated above (22″) to obtain 176 rows. Then I divide that number by my pre-felted row gauge (5 rows/in) to obtain 36 inches. So I knitted along, for about 180 rows, or until I came to about 36″.

That’s it! So all I did was cast on 72 stitches and work in Stockinette Stitch for 180 rows, which came out to 37″, which is pretty darn close to my measurements above! So also, as you go along you can measure, and if for some reason you have 180 rows and it’s only 20 inches, you either did the calculations wrong, or maybe measured your swatch incorrectly.

Directions

Cast on the number of stitches that you calculated before (72 in my case) and work in St. st for the length you found (180 rows = 36″ in my case). Bind off, and finish as instructed below.

Finishing

The finishing of this bag is really not too hard, all I did was sew the sides together (wrong side facing outwards) with a basketweave stitch (which gives it strength on the sides) and then I just did a basketweave stitch on the bottom of the bag to give it a bit of strength too, and then flipped it right side out. Then felt!

Felting

Felting this bag is a very simple process. All I did was felt like you usually hear, you know, in a zippered pillowcase with a pair of jeans, with hot water. But I paid very careful attention to the bag, so that I could stop when it was just the right size.

Basically, I put the washer on a medium load size with hot water, and I put the bag in a zippered pillowcase and tossed it in with a pair of jeans. I also added a tablespoon of Eucalan woolwash, which is really good stuff. Then every 5 minutes I stopped the washer and pulled out the pillowcase, wrung out the bag and measured it. This is easier said than done with really hot water, so you might want to get some cleaning gloves and tongs or something, I really should have done that.

When I felted it, it shrunk to 13″ wide really quickly, but was taking slower to shrink to the right length. When it shrunk to 13″ wide, I put the washer on gentle next time I put it back in, just so that it would go a little bit slower, so I could have more control. It eventually shrunk to like 12.5″ by 12″, so I stopped the washer and pulled it out. Then I gave it a cold water rinse, to firm up the felt.

Then for blocking, I took a book that was the same size as my laptop and put it in a plastic bag, and stuck it inside the wet felted bag. I also took and pinned the top of the bag together so that it would stretch out as it dried, so that there would be room for a zipper of button on the top. Then once it was dry, it was done!

Finishing

I’m still working on the accessories for my bag, so this section isn’t finished yet, but should be soon. I’m working on a supportive handle, because the first one I didn’t isn’t too strong, and a shoulder strap, a button closure and some pockets. So look for this stuff soon, but the rest of the pattern should give you plenty to start with!

Notes & Comments

Well that’s my pattern, I hope you like it, and that your felting endeavours come out well too! If you make this bag, I’d love to hear from you, and see pictures of your bag! Also, if you take careful notes and measurements, I’d love those as well, because I’d love to have a table of different computer sizes and yarns, so that in the future not everyone has to swatch this bag. Enjoy!