A New Purse -- Finally!

My old purse had gone through its paces – from Chic (or as chic as I’m going to get, which is to say – not very), to Shabby Chic, to just plain old Shabby. It served me well, but its day in the sun was done.

So, here we go:

Oh, I really like that. I used BasicGrey’s Little Black Dress 2 with Pink Chalk Studio’s Mail Sack pattern. (I made up the MIni size).

It’s the exact same pattern I used before. I really did love that purse down to its shabby bones. But now, after a little bit of tool and gadget love, I’m back in business. I used the GO! to cut the two inch squares. I used Pellon’s fusible grid interfacing to sew up the patches.

Here’s the grid:

Here’s the grid with the patches laid down:

The first set of rows sewn:

And the second:

I love working with Pellon’s fusible grid. It makes piecing go so fast!  I showed how I used it in previous blog entries.  If you’re interested, you can find the tutorials here (the square grid) and here (the on-point grid).

I used fusible fleece for body. Since the purse has darts, I cut out the wedges so there would be less bulk:

Meanwhile, here’s a close-up of some of the buttons that I added for a little bit of interest – also because I love buttons and it’s nice to get them out of the button box!

One last shot, the inner pocket:

I’ve made up some more Civil War sampler blocks, too, but I’ll save those for another day.

Meanwhile, I’m off with my new bag to go be chic (ha).