Ha, I see this I cord thing is just as puzzling as I first suspected!
Well, I will be very interested to know what you did. I'm in the middle of kntting my first I cord directly attached to the bag but I haven't been working with a pattern. I thought I'd just keep going til it's long enough then somehow attach it on the other side. Like figure it out when I get there. So, this is interesting....
Did you figure it out yet? It sometimes help to go to KNitting Pattern Central and look at a lot of bags and what they did....