The cutest yet sturdiest knitted bag you ever did see! Thanks to plastic cable ties hidden inside neat tucks, the Boulevard Bag holds its shape perfectly without the need for a lining. It’s a robust little thing! It looks cute for an evening, but also fits SO MANY THINGS inside that you can easily use it as a daytime carry-everything bag. Designed to either use stash scraps held together or show off a single skein of pretty boucle, the Boulevard Bag works in all kinds of yarn combinations.

YARN A: chunky weight yarn, OR a combination of yarns that adds up to chunky weight (see Notes on choosing yarn). Approx 85-90m per yarn for main bag.

Sample used 1 strand of Bluefaced Undyed Yarns Chunky Mohair loop (88% kid mohair, 8.4% wool, 3.6% nylon, 100m per 100g skein) held together with 1 strand of Fyberspates Cumulus (74% baby suri alpaca, 26% silk, 150m per 25g ball) in shade Natural.

YARN B: aran weight cotton. Approx 85m. Sample shown used Rico Creative Cotton Aran (100% cotton, 85m per 50g) in shade Black.

GAUGE: 15 sts and 20 rows to 4 inches / 10 cm in stocking stitch. Suggested size 4mm.

NEEDLES & NOTIONS: 4mm needles of any length.
Zipper (approx 10” / 25 cm.
Cable ties (aka zip ties) for structure. Sample used 12 cable ties of width 4.8mm and length 380mm.
You will also need matching sewing thread, a tapestry needle (for
weaving in ends) and a sewing needle (for assembling bag).

SIZING: finished bag measures approx 10.5” / 27 cm wide and 5.5” / 14cm deep.

CHOOSING YARN
For the white sample, I used 1 strand of chunky boucle held with 1 strand of alpaca (linked below). On a 4mm needle, this knit up to a dense yet flexible fabric.

For the pink sample, I used 1 strand of DK weight cotton, 1 strand of DK weight mohair, 1 strand of laceweight mohair, and 1 strand of alpaca all held together. On a 4mm needle, this knit up to an extremely dense fabric (literally like carpet), that made for a slow knitting process but a very sturdy bag. I used 2 strands of DK cotton held together for the strap.

There is lots of flexibility with yarn choices for this design, depending how firm you’d like the fabric. It could be knit with oddments of random yarns held together, using a regular boucle, or all kinds of fun yarns. I would definitely recommend using a fluffy / textured / loopy yarn of some description as these yarns ‘compress’ whilst on the needles then ‘expand’ to fill the gaps.

CHOOSING NEEDLES
4mm needles are suggested for this pattern, which may seem extremely small for chunky weight yarn but is necessary to create the dense fabric. Gauge isn’t too critical so long as your bag isn’t too big for your zipper, but it is important to have a firm fabric.

CONSTRUCTION
The Boulevard bag is worked in 3 pieces: 2 identical bag halves, and 1 strap. Short rows and decreases are used to create the 3D shape of the bag, and the two halves are joined with a 3 needle bind off along the centre of the gusset.

Tucks are used to create channels through which reinforcements are inserted. Samples used plastic cable ties for this purpose, but
other strong yet flexible items (such as corset boning) could also work.

The strap is worked in double knitting, which creates a strong & reversible fabric. Once all 3 components are knitted and the ends woven in, the zipper is handstitched in using matching sewing thread. The strap is then sandwiched between the gusset and the top of the bag and handstitched into place. The pattern includes a video tutorial for assembling the bag.

SHAPE OPTIONS
There are 2 subtly different shape options included in the pattern. Version 1 (white sample) is almost semicircular, whereas version 2 (pink sample) is slightly more boxy with a flatter base.

@lilykatemakes #BoulevardBag