The Pilbeam Bag is designed to evoke the carpet bags used by merchants and sea-farers in the Victorian period and is named after my great Uncle - Alfred Pilbeam - who, along with Scott and Shackleton, was a member of the crew of the Scottish built RRS Discovery on its Antarctic Expedition in 1901.

I have used beautiful, pure wool, heritage yarns from the New Lanark Historic Village Trust, an UNESCO site, with whom I was proud to collaborate on this pattern. All the proceeds from the printed versions of the pattern bought directly from mill go directly to the charitable trust.

The bag is crocheted in squares with the Scottish themed motifs cross stitched onto the surface. The sides and bottom of the bag are crocheted in one piece.

The bag uses seven colours; 6 x 50g and 1 x 100g in Chunky Pure New Wool.

Stitches used are DC, DC2tog, DC front post and DC back post.

The pattern uses written instructions.

The pattern contains full colour charts for each of the six cross stitch designs.

The original bag was lined and the handles used were 20cm in diameter.

The pattern was tech-edited by Amelia Hodgson at Woollenwords, (Woollenwords@gmail.com)