Conquering Strawberries and Cream

This is not a diet tip :-)..... I love Strawberries and Cream far too much to conquer them.
Its simply the name I've given to my little curved bag and am happy to report its almost there. I played around with various ideas for the side panels and spent much time "crocheting in reverse" until I stumbled upon a creative solution:

By increasing evenly across the rows and increasing the gap between the increases once per row I ended up with these pretty little fans. I was then left with another minor problem - how to shape the curved centre to the bag - so after a bit of fiddling around I hit upon the idea of crocheting straight rows across one of the straight sides of the fan, shaping the inner curve as I went....

The test was then putting it together to see if the idea worked and made up a front for this pretty little bag and this is what I ended up with, having crocheted around the "neck line" to pull it all together:

And as you can see I also played around a bit more with the idea of a flower on the front and have changed the original design slightly to turn it into a patch pocket. The back is nearly finished so onward and upward for an evening working out the handle - probably pretty little crochet beads - thank you Pam for your suggestion :-). Will also crochet a strip to form the sides of the bag to give it a little bit of depth. Have enjoyed making this one so much am considering making a much larger adult version for my Folksy Shop