knitting bag using penguin & fish's knitty kitty pattern

Have you seen the new Here Kitty, Kitty line of fabric and embroidery patterns from Penguin & Fish? They are adorable! Seriously cute. And I was very excited when I was asked to help show off these fun designs for the Here Kitty, Kitty blog tour!

The PDF embroidery patterns are available now. There's Crafty Cat and Knitty Kitty, which is the one I chose. Actually, it was really difficult to decide, and to be honest, I'll probably end up stitching the other design too. After all, these are seriously cute! But the reason I chose Knitty Kitty is because I thought it would be perfect on a knitting bag. And it is!



Starting with my bag idea, I dug into my fabric stash and found this delightful brown linen and a pretty floral to line the bag. I selected colors based on the fabrics, and grabbed a Color Variations floss for the kitty. It's funny, but I didn't even notice until it was finished that it came out looking a whole lot like my kitty, Darcy!

A quick word on this linen...I heart it! It was an on-a-whim purchase from fabric-store.com, and I have only the best things to say about their linens. Because I couldn't trace directly onto it, I used Sulky Sticky Fabri-Solvy. If you don't have this in your embroidery supplies, buy some now.

But back to the stitching. Almost everything here is back stitch, but for the knitting (which naughty kitty has taken off the needles!), I alternated lines of back stitch with chain stitch, and the texture is just perfect!



The bag pattern I used was from Very Purple Person, and I followed a tip from here. Knowing that this was going to be made into a tote, but not wanting to stitch onto the cut bag piece and risk fraying, I placed the bag pattern on the fabric and stuck the embroidery motif down in a spot that would work.

After I finished the embroidery and washed away the Fabri-Solvy, I cut out the pieces (being careful on the embroidery placement) and followed the tutorial.




Easy peasy! Now I have a bag to tote my knitting around (mom requested new dishcloths!) and it has the sweetest, most mischievous kitty on the side.

Now, normally when I'm stitching or knitting or anything else like this, Darcy cat will attack my supplies. (Sometimes she barfs on them too...but you didn't want to know that, did you?) So I thought I'd give this bag and yarn the Darcy test:



What? You want to take my picture?



Sure, I'll play along...



Oh wait. Nope. I don't care. I'm a cat. You can't make me do anything.



So much for that! I have no doubt that she'll go all crazy on my knitting when I'm trying to be productive and there're no cameras around. My understanding is that a few other notoriously naughty crafty cats were being equally unhelpful when prepping for the Here Kitty, Kitty blog tour. Be sure to check out all the stops and see if other stitchers did any better than I did with their kitty pics!

Tuesday, April 29 // Penguin & Fish Introduction
Wednesday, April 30 // While She Naps
Thursday, May 1 // Follow the White Bunny
Monday, May 5 // Wild Olive (that's me!!)
Tuesday, May 6 // Mr. X Stitch
Wednesday, May 7 // Feeling Stitchy
Thursday, May 8 // Shiny Happy World
Friday, May 9 // Penguin & Fish Wrap Up

Thanks for the stitchy fun, Alyssa! Find the Here Kitty, Kitty patterns all of Penguin & Fish's whimsical designs here.