meltintall3 | Getting a Grip on it (Reply)

My purse handles wore out after several years of frequent use, but the body itself is sound as ever. So I thought to replace the handles. Tablet weaving has been a fascinating idea for some time, but a great mystery. NarniaWebber wild rose kindly shared her expertise in a comprehensive tutorial that managed to demystify all the points I hadn't gathered from Card Weaving by Candace Crockett.

I planned to directly replace the handles by weaving one long continuous strip that would wrap around the bag and cover the old handles so I wouldn't have to pick out or replace any stitching. I found a formula for figuring out how much yarn I'd need to cut for the project and measured and measured again because my measuring tape couldn't do the entire strip at once.

Again, the measuring tape wouldn't be long enough to do the pieces of yarn all in one go. So I decided that instead of doing each piece individually I'd wrap it around posts set the proper length apart and that'd cut down on repetitive scissor usage...

All the reading seemed to have paid off, because when I finally started weaving it just worked. Horray! The biggest challenge was remembering which row I was on, and which way I needed to turn the cards next. I managed to mess myself up after doing ten sets or so, so I picked it all out and started over.

I'd still managed to mess up my measurements, though. My strap wasn't nearly long enough when I reached the end of the yarn. So I only have a single strap that pulls from the ends of the bag instead of the sides, and I haven't cut the old handles off yet because... well... If this doesn't work I can try plan A again with fresh measurements... (The likelihood of that is very, very small. I'm far more likely to make another strap for my computer case where it won't matter quite so much if my measurements are accurate. ;) ) I finished the ends by serging them. (That was scary. I had to cut it quite close to the weaving before I could run it through the serger.) Then I zig-zagged the ends together and sewed the resulting loop on my bag. The weaving is a bit stretchy. (Will it eventually stretch with use to the length I originally wanted?)

In conclusion, I need a longer measuring tape. :p