The bag

My mum was born on Xmas day. not such a special day in Israel but here in England it raises a few eyebrows. She was 60 years old and deserved a special present. After some thinking I remember a really beautiful pattern designed by Fiona Morris. Now Fiona is a dear friend of mine but beside that she is phenomenal in her knitting knowledge and in my opinion what Fiona does not know it is nor worth knowing.


The pattern is a silver evening bag, very glamorous, perfect for the theatre, weddings and black tie parties..

There were a few options of beads and yarn combination but I chose the original:

3*10 grams balls of no. 8 Pearle cotton in pale grey

160 grams of size 10 seed beads

size 1.25 mm needles!!! (American size 0000)

All materials for this bag available from Fiona

The metal hand bag frame in Nickel available from 'Bags of handles'.

The making of this bag took me about a month. It is on very small needles and at the beginning you have to get used to the small stitches. The beads need to be prestrung to the cotton with a beading needle and some nymo thread. The technique used is called beaded knitting. The bag is knitted in Garter stitch with beads strung between stitches. The shape of the bag is produced by stringing different numbers of beads between the stitches and some short row shaping.

The large amount of beads give this stunning bag some substantial weight. I decided to saw an inner silk material for extra touch. I wish I could see my mum's face when she opened her present, I gave it to my sister before she flew to Israel...