The moment I saw the Star Stitch Purse designed by Stephanie of All About Ami last year, I instantly fell in love with it. It’s the kind of handmade purse that I’ve been wanting to make for myself! For one, it uses my favorite crochet stitch that has a simple yet elegant texture. I also love how the stylish handles and flat base of the purse were made, the techniques are quite easy and require very few steps. In terms of size, it can actually hold all the essentials with room for my little boy’s water bottle and snack which makes it a good everyday bag!

You may be wondering what took me so long to make the purse, it’s the yarn actually. The original purse was made with Lion Brand’s 24/7 cotton yarn but after months of searching I realized this yarn is not available locally. Since international shipping is way too expensive for me, I had to search for alternatives that would work just as well. Finally, I found the Dapper Dreamer Combed Cotton yarn by Gantsilyo Guru Selections. I knew it was the type of yarn I’ve been looking for, I tried using it first with my Basketweave Stitch Pouch and it holds the shape of the project pretty well. The fiber is quite durable and will hold up to repeated wear/use. I used approximately 600 meters of this yarn for the purse.

However, the purse pattern calls for a 5.5mm crochet hook and to be able for me to work comfortably with the yarn I have I should use a crochet hook between the size of 3.5mm-4.5mm. So using my 4.00mm crochet hook I adjusted the number of stitches to achieve the size I want. You can do a bit of math to figure out the stitch counts for your preferred size. In my case, I added 22 more chains to the foundation chain to achieve my desired width of 13 inches which is a little narrower and got a total of 77 star stitches for each row. I finished a total of 39 rows to get the same height as Stephanie’s purse.

I made mine fully lined with a zipper. I stopped crocheting at Row 37 and sewed the flat base first. Afterwards, I made a cloth lining following the bag’s width and length. You would notice that I sewed the base of the lining the same way as the base of the purse which helped retain the shape of the bag. The photo below shows the lining I made. I have crocheted this lining to the bag using half double crochet stitches then made the final row of star stitches. You can check this helpful video from Nicki’s Homemade Crafts if you want to learn how to crochet a lining. Lastly, I crocheted the handles and hopefully next time I could make the leather handles as well (I’m smiling at that thought).

The project may seem complicated, but it’s actually very easy with Stephanie’s well written pattern and blog post. You’ll see that the purse can be made larger or smaller by increasing/decreasing the number of foundation chain stitches. So, if you are just excited as I always am about making this purse, head over to All About Ami’s blog HERE to check out the free pattern and see her other beautiful makes.

I started using the purse last Sunday and here are some of the photos my brother was able to capture before we went to the church. I added my DIY tassel charm with crocheted beads to accessorise the purse a bit, and if you’d like to see how I made this you may check my separate blog post HERE.