Second stop – a purse!

Since the pillows went well, I felt like maybe just maybe I was a natural, or at least on a roll.  Of course, I couldn’t have been more wrong…

But nonetheless, next up in the tutorials was a purse. 

I couldn’t find the pattern that was called for in the tutorial… so I got one that was close to it.

I must add, this pattern wasn’t for just any purse – it was a LINED purse.  Scary.

Here is the pattern that I actually got, so you can see what it should look like when finished.   I was trying to make the top one.

I purchased all of the necessary items.  Read the pattern, though there were still lots of foreign words.  I cut each piece, which felt painstakingly slow – you have to cut the pattern piece, pin it to the fabric, cut the fabric… for a hundred pieces.  Not really a hundred, but it felt like it.  So, then, I was finally ready to sew.  I had to call my mom about every five minutes for meanings of words and instructions as things like “baste stitch the flap” didn’t quite make sense to a beginner like me.

Though I don’t have photos of me making the purse, here are some after photos.  Feast your eyes on this! 

Hopefully the image is big enough to see the horrible stitching and imperfections.  Some of the random threads are from me ripping seams and redoing them as I was really guessing on what they wanted me to do with the “facing.” 

Note: the actual strap is the piece of fabric not yet sewn that is laying above the purse. 

Below there is a bit of the lining showing.

Good news is, you can kind of tell what it is and the lining fits well!  The bad news is:

-  Now the pattern called for corduroy or leather.  I chose velvet.  Velvet is thick.  Very thick.  It’s hard to sew when there are multiple layer being sewn together and then straps on top of that.
- My mom kept hearing me sew on the phone and said you seem to be sewing super-fast, slow down.  I didn’t realize why, but now I do.  My seams aren’t straight.
- I didn’t want to change out the thread in order to “practice” so yeah, it’s ivory and you can see it.  And, therefore you can see how imperfect it is.
- I didn’t mark any of the fabric for where anything should be attached or sewn.  I didn’t even own tracing paper at the time. 
Many lessons learned.  In the end, it got too thick to attach the thingamajig that the strap attaches to…  So, I nixed the strap. 

What I am going to do is see this as a learning experience, realize that this was a fairly difficult project for a second project and… use it to wrap things I get from the flea market this weekend… and make a new purse with new fabric that isn’t velvet!

It’s all about the journey, right?