I love handmade bags. Unfortunately, most of my handmade purses are…not handmade by me. I have yards and yards of cool vintage material I pick up in all sorts of different places with every intention of one day making something from it, but rarely ever find the time. Usually when I do make something, it is with the intention of selling it to someone else. Yesterday I had the rare occasion of not really having to do anything all day, so I decided it was time to make use of some of that fabric for myself!
This was a terribly awful wall hanging of…well, we haven’t quite determined what this supposed to be. Elk? Deer? Caribou? Something like that. I wish I would have taken a picture of it before I started to show it’s crazy ugliness. It was fake velvety material, and the thing was so tacky I just had to buy it. It screamed “Make me into a bag!”.
I framed a close up deer-like animal for one side of the bag, and the grazing deer-like animals for the other side. The whole wall hanging was trimmed in a repeating patterned edging, which worked perfectly for the shoulder strap. I couldn’t decide which side to make the front and which to make the back, so I made it reversible with a tab that fits over the top and buttons on both sides to close the bag!
I backed the material with interfacing to make sure it would stand up to my abuse and I lined it with a brown-black marbled cotton, and made several pockets to better organize all the needless things I always jam into my purses.
Four months of the material laying on my shelf, four hours to make my new favorite purse. Totally worth it.