Ruffled Purse

You’ve had a birthday shout “Horray!”,

We’re going to sing to you today. . .

My friend Mindy recently had a birthday.  I wanted to get her something special, because she is super special.  Mindy loves purses, so I thought that would probably be the road to go.  For some reason I thought it would be a terrific idea to make the purse myself . . . Things went well, for the most part.  I found this great tutorial by Tam from Sew Dang Cute, who was guest posting on Ucreate. 

So I trucked my tush to Hancock Fabrics, where everyone was so nice and helpful.  We recently moved here and I’d been going to JoAnn’s because that was were I went where we lived before.  But honestly some of the people there where sort of cranky, not to me directly but to other costumers, which made me very scared to ask them questions.  And now they are going out of buisness, (interesting correlation, huh?) so I decided to try Hancock. 

I wasn’t sure what colors I wanted until I saw this wonderfully lovely yellow, white, and grey flower print. 

It was way outside my comfort zone of colors, but I decided to go for it.  Sadly this was the only picture that I took, and it wasn’t even finished, or that great cause I took it with my phone.  But this was the best and cutest part:

To find the tutorial click {HERE}

Some things of my own that I would add if you try to make your own. 

• Buy a leather or some type of heavy duty sewing machine needle.  I asked the ladies at the fabric store if the thought I would need one.  They highly recommended it, so I went for it.  I’m glad I did.  I broke TWO leather needles.  I can’t imagine how many I would have broken if I’d used a regular needle. 
• I had a TON of vinyl leftover.  I could make a whole other purse . . . not sure how this happened . .
• I almost ran out of fusible interfacing. 
• The darn pocket was a pain in the neck!  I sewed it on a million times and it kept going crooked and bunching the lining . . . I think it would have been much easier if I would have just used two pieces of cotton rather than a piece of vinyl and a piece of cotton. 
• I also had a hard time sewing the two pieces of vinyl together for the strap.  I don’t know how this could have been easier . . .