by Rachel Teo

Created on: February 13, 2009

There are various ways of crocheting a purse. You can do a purse with a round base, or a purse with rectangular base, or even a triangular base. That's the beauty of crochet...it's very versatile, and changes to the pattern are very easy to make. With that in mind, a lot of the instructions will have you crochet until it looks about right to you. This will allow you to make many different styles of purses without forcing you to hunt down many different patterns.

To begin with, you will need some yarn and a crochet hook to gauge. The amount of yarn you'll need depends largely on the size of your purse and the gauge you are crocheting to, but two 100g balls of worsted weight yarn would probably be enough, although your personal mileage may vary.

Let's start with a simple purse with a rectangular base. Begin with a starting chain that is as long as you would like your purse to be. The usual gauge for worsted weight yarn is 11 to 14 stitches to an inch, so for a small purse about 6 inches long, chain 67 to 85 stitches, depending on the tightness of your stitch. Then do several rows of single crochet, until you have a rectangle that is large enough for your base. For a small purse, about 6 inches by 2 inches would be a nice size.

When you have got a rectangular base of the appropriate size, chain 1 and single (or double, if you want the purse to be finished more quickly) crochet your way around the entire rectangle. For the first side, continue along the rectangle as you have been crocheting for the last few rows, but at the end of the row, rather than turning around and going back along the row, pick up a stitch along the side of the rectangle and keep going. Do this for the remaining sides of the rectangle and keep going until you find yourself back at the beginning of this row, then chain 1 (or 2, for double crochet) and keep going round and round the rectangle until you have a purse that's deep enough for you.

You now have most of a purse done! All that's lacking is a strap, and some sort of closing mechanism to ensure nothing falls out of your purse.

For the strap, simply turn your purse around and crochet back and forth along the short side of your purse, until you have a strap of the appropriate length. A good way of testing the strap is to safety pin the loose end to the other short side of the purse and try the purse on, across your body or over your shoulder or however you prefer to wear it. When the strap is of the desired length, fasten off and leave enough spare yarn to stitch the strap to the remaining short side of the purse and weave in the ends.

Now, all that's left is the closure! The simplest is to attach a button in the middle of one side and create a small loop of some sort at the other side. Alternatively, you could crochet a flap along one of the long sides and attach a magnetic clasp to the underside of the flap and at the bottom of the purse, for a messenger bag style purse. Or you could just leave it open, if your purse is deep enough.

If rectangular bases aren't quite your style, you can easily crochet a hobo bag by starting out with a circle as a base. You could even start out with a free-form shape as a base, and just crochet upwards around the circumference of the shape. Your imagination is the limit!

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