Pin Loom Yarn Bags

There is no rule, as far as I know, that says that all yarn bags must look like something that your Great Aunt Harriet or that scary old lady in the Wizard of Oz would make, but that seems to be the prevailing idea. The upside is that yarn bags are so old fashioned and usable that they never really go out of style.

I think that we are on the verge of a great Yarn Bag Renaissance- at least I hope so. After all, there is an enormous amount of fabulous yarn around these days, we need a few good yarn bags to carry it.

I will modestly confess that I have a pattern for a truly marvelous yarn bag in my book Pin Loom Weaving, now available for purchase. Pictures of all the Pin Loom Weaving items can be found under the page heading, Pin Loom Weaving; The Book.

Here are some other great yarn bags including this vintage bag highlighted on Eloomination.  You can find the pattern for this classic bag at the Eloomination site: http://www.eloomanation.com/gallery/vintage.php

This next bag is crochet but wouldn't it would look great woven with a pin loom? The pattern is available at: http://archive.berroco.com/exclusives/bramble_bag/bramble_bag_lg.html 

My first yarn bag was the product of falling out of love with an earlier project and having a bunch of weavies already made into right triangles. This bag strikes me as the epitome of ugly but useful. It is nice and heavy and will handle all sorts of weaving items. See a simple pattern below. I left out the part about turning the weavies into triangular pieces first, that seems a lot of work for no purpose, but I have posted notes on how to make dual colored weavies to recreate that effect.

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

My original title for this article was "DON'T MAKE THIS" but I have made too many goofy things myself to be lecturing anyone else on what they should or shouldn't weave.

On the other hand, tastes do change over time and while these patterns may have seemed like a good idea when they were published, I don't believe that time has been kind to them.

For example, was there ever a good time to wear a woven bathing suit? I'm thinking not. This was one of two suits introduced in the very first book of Weave-It patterns in 1936.

If you are curious about what the other swimsuit looks like, or you want to copy out the directions so that you can whip something up for this summer, you can see a copy of the entire Weave-It Book at Eloomanation.


The embarrassing aspect of the next entries is that I remember people (me, my friends) wearing fashions like these with great enthusiasm. I don't remember why, maybe it was the drugs.

There is very little excuse for these outfits. The colors are weird, they don't drape well and the multiple rows of crochet between each square takes away from the woven squares that they were supposed to be promoting. (I'm pretty sure that I had a dress just like the one on the lower right and thought it was incredibly cool. We called it a maxi-dress.)

There may be someone reading this today who finds these fashions to be just right. Which goes to show that every style has its day. My personal fashion rule is, "If you wore these fashions the first time, you don't have to do it again."