Problem with felting bag - handles move!

Apologies for cross posting.

Hi all,

I’ve been having problems! I’ve been knitting bags using the magic loop method which I then felt. The bag is knitted in one piece, with the base being a a kind of rectangular shape with curved short ends. I don’t actually pick up stitches from the base of the bag, as to make the base - I increase stitches from my initial cast on, then just knit up the sides (the base is basically split in the middle parallel with the long side, with 1/4 the stitches for each short side at the beginning and end of each needle (not sure I explained that very well!). I then just take equal number of stitches from each end of each needle to make the handle (one at each short side), so it should always be centred on the middle of the short ends.

I’ve made this bag on numerous occasions with Rowan magpie wool, but now I’ve changed to a thinner wool (its 200m per 100g). I have changed the size of the knitting needles accordingly. The bag looks normal until I felt it, but then the two strap ends seem to move around the rim so they are no longer above the two short ends.

Has anyone any ideas why this is happening and what I can do about it, please? I presume it’s something to do with the way the stitches are tightening during the felting, but I never had this problem before. It’s really annoying cos the bags take ages to knit and I bought a fortunes worth of this wool, with plans to make lots of bag gifts for my family.

Any help really appreciated,

Thanks,
Anna

That’s normal with a thinner fabric. All you need to do is take some pins and pin down the bottom. Then take the top and twist it until the straps are where you want them to be, and pin them down. Then let it dry. You already know this could take several days. But don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal with a thinner fabric.

Thanks a lot Braden, I’ll give that a go.