I saw a post a few weeks ago that had pictures of a few different simple little purses that had appliqué details of windows and doors, so they looked like houses. They were very cute! Ans also very uncredited. I looked for sources, and quickly discovered that most of them had been re-posted without credit for so long that the originals were lost, or at least extremely obscured, but I found enough of them to further discover that making purses like that seemed to have been fairly popular among non-English-language craft bloggers 10-15 years ago. Here's my Tumblr post of the sources I could find, plus a few others.
As with most craft things, spending that much time looking at this craft made me want to try this craft. I dug into my scrap stash--the same stash I used for the patchwork waist cincher-not-really project, so it's the same pink-blue-green color scheme
And possibly even less planning.
I have a small bag of cotton pieces I cut into 2" squares, so I started there. The initial plan was to cut each one in half, then sew those 1" by 2" rectangles together to make the 'roof shingles,' but I changed that to 1½" by 2", and fished through the other scraps for enough that I wouldn't repeat any prints.
I used a combination of scraps and fabric from the small yardage stash for the front features. I fused everything down with WonderUnder before zigzagging around the edges.
(There was nothing even remotely like a pattern involved in making this.)
I also used a lot of my fusible interfacing scraps, in two layers, on the backs of everything except the lining.
And I made the bias tape from a fairly small piece of gifted gingham--I initially wanted it to end up at ¼" double folded, but I don't have the experience to make that work, so I went with this at 9mm (so very roughly 3/8") There ended up being just enough of it left, after making and failing the ¼", to make enough of the 9mm double fold go everywhere I wanted it.
I can see now that it probably would have been fine if I'd used wider bias tape, because the 'shingles' ended up taller on the top and bottom rows. It's fine. I spent a lot of this project telling myself not to overcomplicate things, because we all know my brain defaults to "Overcomplicated."
That included keeping the strap simple--yes, it could have been more simple if I had left out the adjustable slide, but it was actually lazier to make it adjustable than to try to make it an exact length. I didn't even have to cut the ribbon.
And, yes! I finally used the grommet press I got in December! There's still a learning curve! But I've started!
I did not use the bias tape application presser foot--I tried, but I didn't have the skills to maneuver it around the small radius curve on the roof/eaves corner, so I went back to pinning a lot and carefully stitching. By machine, no, pfft, I'm not going to hand sew. So the back of the bias tape is kind of a mess. Learning.
The lining fabric has a selvedge declaring it crushed habutae, and probably would also say 100% polyester if it hadn't been cut off. I thought of putting a small pocked inside on the lining, but. No. Don't overcomplicate.
I did put a pocket on the back, lined on the upper fabric but no change to lining on the in-pocket part of the other side.
The back of the bias application suffered badly at the corners,and this was after picking out the original stitching and pinning it more thoroughly and sewing again. I'm definitely still very low skill with bias tape.
I used a scrap of a creepy toy print I thrifted years ago for the back pocket, and, no, I did not notice until taking pictures how crooked the top edge is. I probably could pick out just a little bit of stitching on each side and maneuver things to be more even, but I probably won't do that. Edit: About a week and a half later, I did indeed do that. It's s till not perfect, but perfection would be out of place, now, wouldn't it?
When I shared this idea with one set of friends, there was a suggestion to make a haunted house version, so I just might revisit this idea again.
No comments:
Post a Comment