Clutch Handbag

I had previously gone on a book buying rampage which included a book on handbags. So as part of exploring different crafty things, I decided to give handbag making a go.

Since it was my first attempt, I wasn’t keen on buying special material in the event that it turned out a disaster. So instead I sourced the materials from the stash that I had sitting around at home and chose black corduroy. It was something that would still look ok and would match most things that I wore.

Following the instructions in the book and 2 reattempts at fixing the top corners of the inside of the handbag (make sure you cut your patterns correctly!) I was able to conjure up this item in a short space of time. I actually thought it would take longer but it turned out a lot easier than expected.

The next step was to dress up the handbag, so I decided to create some sort of flower design. After reading some blogs I used some pretty ribbon I had bought previous and cut up an unused scarf. With some tricky hand stitching I whipped up the flower. It’s probably not exactly what I wanted (given the constraints on the materials available at the time) but it still looked reasonable enough for my first try.

Overall, it was quite a lot of fun making the handbag. I managed to learn some new sewing skills which I can now talk about with my fellow crafty enthusiasts. I will definitely make more handbags again, but only after I finish the scrapbooking piece that needs to be done for my friends wedding!

Lessons learned: sewing, topstitching, flower making