(Written by Shelagh Lewins)
The design of my sprang bag on Hedeby-style handles is based on a macrame bag made in the 1970s with two plywood handles. It was the similarity of those handles to the Hedeby handles that gave me the idea. I used macrame string left over from the original bag to make my sprang version.
The sides of the bag were only sewn partway up, so you could pull the handles apart and have plenty of space for getting things in and out of the bag.
I’ve previously seen rectangular cloth and sprang bags made on Hedeby-style handles, but the bags were narrow. Plain interlinked sprang pulls in so the bag is extra narrow. I used a Viking-age sprang ‘stitch’ that creates a stable open mesh and creates a generous ‘shopping bag’ like the original macrame one.
You have plenty of carrying capacity and easy access to the inside of the bag. The downside is that smaller objects will fall out of the bag, and all objects are visible through the mesh: it would be great for carrying onions, balls of wool, cabbages etc. but not so good for mobile phones! You could insert a cloth liner which would allow the bag to carry smaller, items.
The shoulder strap is great because it holds the bag closed when you are carrying it. It took me a couple of experiments to make a cord that is narrow enough to go through the holes: in the end I used a simple plied cord.
Threadin
g up was the hard bit because I had to work the warps round the slots in the
handles. I found I could work 8 warps around in a spiral before it became too annoying, and fortunately that fitted well with my first pair of handles which had four relatively small slots. I knotted the warp ends to the lower handle and tucked the loose ends inside to make them show as little as possible. When setting up my second bag, I was running out of certain colours so the stripes are irregular.
The handles on my small bag are 25cm (10″) long.
Industry Living History 