This puffy spike stitch crochet tote bag pattern is the perfect bag for all your needs. It’s the perfect size for carrying your crochet projects, books, as a market tote, or for anything you normally take along in a purse.

Puffy Spike Stitch Bag - Free Crochet Pattern — Puffy Spike Stitch Bag – Free Crochet Pattern

The stitch pattern gives you a pretty leaf design, that looks beautiful in fall colors! But Christmas is also a pretty season, so working this up in a red and white, a green and white, or even in all three colors would look great!

How Do You Crochet a Tote Bag?

The method is very easy. But this stitch pattern is at the intermediate level. So basically the bag is started at the bottom and worked to the top in one piece using two different colors. The handles are worked separate, but you can always work them in one piece as well using this method.

The Bottom of the Bag

The bottom is started with 28 chains. Then you crochet into the chains, first on one side and then the other side to begin a rectangle. This tutorial shows how to crochet along both sides of the starting chains.

Another thing that helps with the bottom is to keep the seam from taking up too much space. My way of solving that is to join each round with a tight slip stitch.

Each round is increased by eight stitches with an increase of two stitches in each corner.

The Puffy Spike Stitch On The Side Of Bag

The puffy spike stitch is worked over five stitches going down one, two, and three rows below. Think of it is a normal puff stitch, but each leg is picked up from a different stitch in the rounds below.

After all the spikes have been made, you pull the yarn though all the loops on the hook. Then secure the stitch with a chain one.

Next, you skip a stitch and then single crochet into the next stitch. This part is tricky, because after the puff stitch is made, it’s hard to see which stitch to skip and which stitch to crochet into. To solve that, I like to place a marker in the next stitch that I’ll be working into after making the puffy spike stitch. See the Puffy Spike Stitch Crochet Tutorial.

I changed colors in the first round of working the puff stitches. This way the pretty spikes are brought out nicely. I worked with two colors, but you could easily work this with more colors as well.

Keeping the Seam Straight

The bag is a bit problematic because, in crochet, the seam naturally spirals. But for this pattern you don’t want it to spiral. You want to keep the seam as straight as possible in order for the spikes to align above each other.

Joining each round with a tight slip stitch helped me to keep the seam straight. I had a very slight spiral, but not enough to throw me off too much.

With that said, if yours spirals, it’s no problem as your bag will still come out beautiful! Below is the image from one of my testers. She went with the spiral, and I think it looks great!

A few other tips from my testers for keeping a straight seam:

One tester did not single crochet into first stitch; instead she counted her chain 1 as her first stitch. And I swear her bag came out looking straighter than mine. So this is definitely worth a try.

And another tester suggested not to make the chain 1 and just single crochet into the first stitch. To be honest, I didn’t think this could be done, but it does work. It’s a bit awkward at first, but it totally eliminates the bulk of the chain-1.

And if none of the above work, my only other suggestion would be to discard the written pattern in regards to when to work the spike stitch and let the previous spikes guide you. Just make sure that you end up with the same amount of stitches in between each spiked stitch,

The Handles

I’ve included a photo tutorial below on how to make the handles. I worked them with the puff stitch as well. I found them a bit tedious to make, but I love how they turned out once complete!

If you want a simpler way to make them, you can follow this tutorial on How to Make Crochet Bag Handles

Lining Your New Bag

This bag is fairly sturdy as it’s worked in single crochets. But as with any other crocheted bag, if you want to preserve the beauty, you’ll want to line it with a sturdy fabric. Here is a tutorial on how to line a crochet bag. The tutorial also shows how to make pockets in the liner as well as how to insert a zipper.

Recommended Yarn

Can you crochet a bag with acrylic yarn? Absolutely! The only thing is that it will stretch out a lot, so you always want to line the bag to prevent that from happening.

I used Red Heart Comfort, but any other worsted weight yarn that gives you the gauge will work as well. Cotton yarn is very durable and ideal for crochet bags.

Other Crochet Bag Patterns to Check Out