My novel, The Lone Rice Ball, is in the multi-author box set, Once Upon a Starry Night, a Christian contemporary romance collection. Also in the box set is my friend Jan Thompson’s novel, Let Me Hold You.

I made this pattern for her to celebrate our box set being released. It’s the crossbody bag worn by Jan’s character Maggie in Let Me Hold You.

If you are savvy with a sewing machine, you can make a cloth lining and sew it to the inside. If you use a stretchy fabric, you can take advantage of the stretchy nature of the bag.

If you leave it unlined, you can take this bag to the beach and easily shake the sand out of it.

I happened to have a D-ring and buckle, which I used to make the strap adjustable, but you don’t need these to make this bag. You can simply sew the end of the strap to the bag rather than using the D-ring. If you have a D-ring but not a buckle, you can do a (YO, k2tog) in the middle of a row about 3/4” from the end of the strap to create a buttonhole, then after you bind off, string it through the D-ring and sew buttons on the strap at intervals so the wearer can adjust the length by changing what button to use.