My Blue Jean Purse

  So I finally sewed up the blue jeans purse that I cut out from the legs of the blue jeans I bought to make my garden apron.  I found lots of youtube video tutorials on how to make a blue jeans purse.  I needed one that I could use my leg fabric and the one I found was perfect.  I love the shape of this one.

  Here is the link to the tutorial:  blue jeans purse.  The maker does not speak English so I watched it through to see if I could follow it.  The maker placed written notes in strategic places when they were making the pattern and after that it was easy to follow the video showing the cutting of the pieces and sewing up of the bag.  It's a 13 minutes video but it's really done very well.  It took me 3 hours to make the purse from making the pattern to the last stitch.  

   Here is my purse.  Blue jeans with navy blue gingham lining.  I love it.

  Next up I have to finish quilting my Grandmother Flower Garden quilt.

  I pulled out the fabric for my next quilt (purchased over a year ago) that I want to start.  I do that to give myself incentive to finish my current project.  I an incapable of working on more than one quilt at a time.  I will work on smaller projects while working on a quilt but I won't have more than one quilt on the go at one time.  I don't have the brain capacity for lots of quilt projects.

New Purse Pattern Review

     I recently had the chance to make up some purses from a pattern that my daughter bought from Annies Catalog.  It's a multi pocket cross body bag pattern by Nancy Green.  It came with written instructions and a video.  The video is geared toward a beginner, but the pattern is not.  The pattern is a little messy because she did not label the pieces and there were a lot of pieces with a lot of the same name.  It was confusing. The pattern writer could have labeled the patterns pieces with an number or a letter to make it easier to put this bag together.  I did leave feedback on this pattern for the designer to see.  Hopefully she will take the time to label pattern pieces next time.

    My daughter and I made these as a joint project.  We made three of these, one for my daughter, one for me and one for her aunt.  I made two changes to the strap.  I made our straps wider and I made our straps adjustable.  We bought our hardware from Emmaline Bags and it was perfect.

    This is the front of the bag.  That's an open pocket.  There is a zipper at the top with a an open pocket inside.  As well as a zipper pocket on the back. 

  This is the back of the bag with the zipper pocket.

Deathly Hallows Fabric

This is a project I couldn't share before.  For our trip to Universal and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter I made my daughter and myself a water bottle holder and a small zippered purse out of this fun Deathly Hallows fabric.  I added a wrist strap and a small loop to the zippered purse so we could hook the purse onto a carabiner and attach it to our belt loops.

When we planned this trip my daughter had announced that she wanted to carry as little as possible into the park so a small purse for cards and water bottle holder would be all she needed.  I worried about how I would do this and decided I could stash stuff in my jean jacket pockets.  Being late November I thought it might be cool enough to wear a jacket in Orlando.

 But two days before we left for our trip, dear daughter decides that she can't possibly travel to the park without a big backpack and all manner of emergency items.  She had decided that she was going to rent a locker for the backpack each day.  She was much happier with this plan and I just wanted us to have as much fun as possible no matter what we had to carry.

The first day we were in the park we bought an small backpack (fanny pack size) because it was way too warm for me to wear my jacket and I needed something to put my cell phone and lip balm in.  We also bought a ticket lanyard, because you have to show your ticket all the time when you go from Universal to Islands of Adventure or to City Walk.  I ended up buying a Slytherin ticket lanyard because I am in Slytherin house and I'm owning it.

Here's a picture of my water bottle holder and purse.

Okay, This Is One Quick Project

  I made this purse from more of my souvenir fabric last night after work.  It took me about an hour and 45 minutes.  Love this.

   And I made this one this morning.  More souvenir fabric.

Instructions For My Purse

This post will memorialize the instructions for how I make my favorite purse.  

In the previous post there were two bags pictured.  The one on the right is the best size for everything I carry to work or shopping, including my eyeglass case, my cell phone, a wristlet for identification/debit card/money, my keys, inhaler, lipstick/Blistex and hand sanitizer.  

The bag on the left is deeper and narrower and it's a great tote bag but I don't like it to use as a purse, everything goes to the bottom and it's hard to reach small items.  The instructions to make my purse are here:

I used the tutorial here: http://www.psiquilt.com/2009/08/frie...-tutorial.html.  This is the basic instruction on how to make the bag.  

My modifications are made to the front and back, the bottom, the quilting (I add a back to the piece to be quilted to save my machine from the batting fuzz), the boxing of the corners and the size of the straps.    

Here are my modifications: The front and back are each 8 strips of fabric that are 2.5" wide x 8" long, sewn together.  Or you can use two pieces of fabric 8" x 16" for the front and back.  The bottom piece is 8" by 16".  I put this together following the instructions from the tutorial. In the alternative you can make the front, back and bottom on piece of fabric that is 24" by 16".

 

To box the bottom on this larger size I measure 2" from the tip of the corners.  Since the bag is bigger, I can make the bottom a little wider that the original instructions. 

I cut my straps 4" by the WOF, then I cut that piece in half to make each one approximately 4" x 21". 

When I quilt the sides and bottom, I put a piece of backing fabric on this piece. I don't like to quilt with just the batting on the machine. I don't like the fiber from the batting getting into my machine.  

I have another piece of floral fabric and the sea turtle fabric that I made a bag with already.  I should have all my bags done in the next couple of weeks. 

Beautiful Sea Turtles

I fell in love with green sea turtles when I traveled to Hawaii in April.  I learned that in Hawaii these turtles are called Honu.  I just had to have some fabric with beautiful sea turtles on it.  This evening I made one of my favorite bags with this fabric.  I have enough of this fabric to make a big tote bag, as well, so you will be see at least one more project made with this fabric.