Out With The Old, In With The New

At last I have finished my new purse. For American readers a purse is something to keep money and cards in which is placed in your hand/shoulder/messenger/bag in the UK. The male equivalent is a wallet

It was made following a very clear tutorial by Ayumi of Pink Penguin which I have made  before following a similar look to the one she has demonstrated. However it is showing it’s age now and I wanted a different look. I wasn’t sure what I wanted until I bought a scrap bag of fabric at Peppermint Stitches and in it were two fabrics that went well with each other; a piece of dark grey linen and a few scraps of fabric by Anna Maria Horner from the Loulouthi collection from a few years ago. It is still available here

Hand quilting on the top

The lining and internal pocket fabrics were also in the scrap bag and are all fabrics that I wouldn’t normally chose but they all went together so well for this project.

The zip was quite difficult to put in – because it was so narrow, not because of the instructions. I have avoided zips in the past but it’s not too bad if you have good instructions. I saw another pattern for a similar purse but the zip ends were on show when you opened it! It looked great on the outside but terrible on the inside, so it is always worth doing a bit of research for a project to find the best one

I enjoyed doing the simple embroidery outlining parts of the fabric design, but the bottom part was closely machine quilted to give it a bit of rigidity. All in all a good project that cost very little. I have had a lot of compliments for the old purse – will the new one get as many?