Purse-A-Palooza

A fun session was had making purses out of old jeans at my Thursday sewing bee. The one on the left is the one I made in class. The little fabric flower is my own addition as the bags looked a bit plain. It is a great way to recycle old jeans! The middle purse (may have been blogged before, oops) is a crocheted bag I made a while back. It was made with wool yarn and then felted. For some odd reason, the bag felted up nicely, the handle not so much. I did stabilize the handle with a heavy decorator fabric lining (same fabric as the purse lining) and that has kept it from stretching out. I tend to "load up" my purses so that extra bit of security was definitely needed!!! The black jeans purse on the right is one I made yesterday at home. I went back to my old lining technique rather than the one our teacher used in the class. Also, she had us use Craft Fuse for the interfacing and I didn't care for the cardboard-y feel to it so I went back to good ole' fusible fleece for the black one. Also, the original purse used a magnetic closure, which I loved, but I had to use my fusible velcro on the black one since I was out of magnetic closures and didn't want to make a trip out!! And for my "at-home" purse, I added a bit of lightweight interfacing to the inside pockets so they wouldn't be so floppy. I always seem to have to change things from patterns!!!

These little fabric flowers were kind of the hit of the sewing bee (blush, blush). I have made many of these over the years to embellish all kinds of things. They are extremely quick and easy:

Take a rectangle of fabric about 13 inches X 3 inches. Iron the strip in half lengthwise with the wrong sides of the fabric together. Then open the strip back up and put the right sides together. Stitch a 1/4 inch seam across the short ends. Iron that seam open, then turn the fabric back to the outside (wrong sides together). With button craft thread doubled, take a running stitch about 1/4 inch from the raw edges. (You can do this with a long machine stitch if desired.) Gather up the fabric by pulling on the thread and knot it off. Sew a button in the center. You can add a pin back or just stitch it on to the item you are embellishing. So fun! If these directions are Clear As Mud, let me know and I'll make another one, photoing the steps as I go along and blog that.