Leather Purse Progress

I found some time to work on the purse this week.  Bontje Baby Girl # 4  whoops #2- moved out last week (again!) and the house has been too quiet, but now I feel like I can get work done.  It will stay that way until Bontje Baby Girl # 5 comes home from University for the summer, then we will be sure to have chaos again!  The best news of the morning has been that Bontje Baby Girl # 3   )whoops 4!)called home to announce that she had just handed in her LAST university paper and is now officially a university graduate.  Congrats Leah!  (apparently my children numbering skills are poor this week!)

Oh right- the purse.  First off, I should mention some sewing type items.(consider this the blog version of “housekeeping” items at a conference.  You know, when the moderator goes up to the podium and declares such mundane facts as “breakfast will be available in the solarium tomorrow morning beginning at 7:30am”, or ”last night someone left their room key in the hospitality suite. You can see me later to retrieve it”.)  Unimportant, yet relevant facts.

So, housekeeping details…  I used to have a teflon foot – I LOVED that foot.  One day I was doing a mad, frenzied cleaning of the sewing room.  I no longer have that foot.  I think it went out in the garbage. I paid like $25 for that sucker!  One day -soon- I will have one again.  So now instead of a telfon foot, I went to the workshop and stole our Teflon tape.  I keep it by the sewing machine and put some on my regular foot whenever I need a teflon foot.  It only lasts for a little while, but it does the trick.  Also I was having some difficulties getting the leather to move. I tried stabilizer, wax paper, baby powder – the wax paper worked the best, but ultimately I adjusted the presser foot all the way up – down- as heavy as it will go – on my machine that means 9. That worked best.  Okay enough sewing info. On to the purse.

The handles were first.  I decided to go with a two-part handle using 2 different materials.  A bronzey wool for  on the body and the leather for handles themselves. 

The straps required 4 rows of topsitiching.  Now I am not the neatest topstitcher in Thorndale! (actually that prize goes to Miss Lauren(Bontje Baby Girl #5), so I decided to use I tip I read and use a Post-it note pad as a guide.  If this is your tip please let me know so that I can attribute it correctly.  I like to give credit where credit is due, and this one deserves acknowledgement.The first photo is the Post-it note taped 10mm from the needle.Photo #2 Topstitching the strap.  For the straps on the purse body, I decided to initially only topstich the middle two rows.  The pattern says to do all rows, then topstitch it on to the purse body over top of the first rows.  This would, in my opinion, look messy.  I did the outside two rows of topstitching when I sewed them on to the purse body.Photo #3 There it is!

I hand sewed the rectangular rings(?) (whatever the heck they are called) to the straps.  You cannot tell from the photo, but I need to add some hand topstitches to make the strap look complete.

Here are the leather straps- I simply cut the leather a 2 1/4 inches wide.  Then I glued them in half, overlapping  the raw edges slightly to make the desired 1 inch finished strap.  I left them overnight and topsitched them this morning.

Oh I almost forgot to mention this little part.  The pattern has you sew on some boning on the wadding under where the strap goes. Like this-It is a bit hard to see- okay I admit it, a LOT hard to see, but it is something that I would never think of doing on my own and it makes the body more stable.  And luckily for me I had exactly – to the centimetre- enough plastic boning.  I usually only have steel spiral, but happened to find a small piece.  Otherwise I would have had to go back to the workshop and hunt up some cable ties!

Next up – the body!