Making the Meditation Flute Bag

SO my friend Greg sends me a message a couple months back and says he has some knitting missions he would like to take on for him. I of course say I will. This is one of them. Being a musical type he recently bought a meditation flute "Ala David Carradine" he said and he needed a bag to carry it around. This flute is 3 feet long and very narrow.

So I bought 2 skeins (135 yards each) pretty Manos Del Uruguay Space-Dyed Wool Yarn in "Jungle" -shades of green (http://www.manosdeluruguay.co.uk/) and knit the pattern for a Mutidirectional Scarf from this site in a very long length. www.angelyarns.com/free-patterns/noro-scarf.php Then I threw it in the wash with some towels and felted it. It felted very nicely and made the colors blend a lot better. But the purpose of felting was to get a more fabric-like material.

I cut the width and lenth of the scarf out of the felted yarn and then if I was thinking this out, I would have sewn the strap on the edge of the fabric at this step. I used nylon webbing and 2 D-rings to create the strap. Taking a very short length of the webbing (maybe 2-3 inches) I singed the ends with alighter (to keep it from unthreading) and then folded it over the top of the 2 D-rings and sewed it together. Then sewed the piece near the bottom end of the fabric. Then I took the rest of the of the webbing (about 2 yards) and sewed the top of the strap about 4 inches below the top of the fabric on the edge. Really I didn't do this till later, but I will explain why, it was a mistake.

Then I sewed a thin layer of cotton fill, the length/width of the fabric, onto the felted fabric. At this point I folded the piece in half (with filling on outside of fold) and sewed up the seam on the edge. Carefully I turned the tube right-side out. I took some thin, black taffeta and sewed a tube almost the same width and length of the bag and with the right side facing out, I sewed the top of the bags together, afterwards, stuffing the black tub inside the felted tube. This is the lining so the flute can easily slide in and out of the bag.

At this point this is when I actually hand-sewed the straps to the bag because I was such a scatter-brain and forgot to do it earlier. But don't do this, sew them on before you close the bag together, it will be MUCH easier! And you can use your machine. Then I used a small piece of silky thick string and sewed it around the outside of the top of the bag with a yarn needle, using big stitches, so that it can be used to open and close the bag. I used almost ALL of the yarn, so make sure you get enough. That's it, voila metitation flute tote! I know I may not be explaining this clearly enough, and if I was thinking about it I would have taken pictures as I was putting it together. But I was too impatient and felt rushed as I made Greg wait long enough for me to put this together and I have yet to finish two other scarves for him! If you do attempt to make this bag or something similar, feel free to contact me and ask any questions. I will do my best to help you :)