On a Lark » Clutches

Mother’s Day and Fabric Flowers

Emily — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:48:09 +0000

Happy Mother’s Day everyone! All the moms in our family decided on mimosas with brunch and take out Chinese for dinner topped off with the newest tradition between my Mom and I: evening walks with our dogs. I’m leash training my puppy. It’s an adventure and one definitely better with company. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

Now that I’ve been home a week, I finally got back down to business with sewing. I made a wallet for a friend and she had a great idea to add fabric flowers. I’d never made them, but I found some great ideas online (like this). I ended up going with an idea I found on Calamity Kim. Here are a few photos from the process:

For a full tutorial, see mine on Hubpages. They’re fun and really easy. Here’s the finished product! As we speak, it’s on it’s way to Florida.

What did you do for Mother’s Day?

Spring Break trip = new clutch required

Emily — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:57:29 +0000

I’m heading down south for a job interview! And I’m also catching up with some college buddies that I haven’t seen for almost TWO YEARS!! If that doesn’t scream “new wallet” then I don’t know what does. I’ve been using this wallet for a while, but I finally got tired of my shady zipper installation and I decided to try a new pattern. I drafted one this morning the dividers and triangles I should have been using for chartwork practice.

I’m a big fan of a bright lining so I used the same pink fabric from this bag. And as always, Piper, the lion/golden retriever, helped out.

Piper doesn’t look too pleased with my design. Oh man, this is going to be a much needed trip. Wish me luck!

Zippers can’t get me down- Part 2

Emily — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:20:07 +0000

So, the previous post is all about my first clutch making experience. Once I made it, and discovered that I needed some improvement in my zippers and the general design, I started doing some research. So, first things first, I needed to learn to properly install a zipper in a small pouch. I found tons of great tutorials on installing zippers in clothing or for zippered pockets, like this one from J. Caroline Creative.
But I still couldn’t find one for a small zippered bag until I found THE GREATEST ZIPPER TUTORIAL IN THE WORLD! Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but I would say that my level of excitement when I found this site was equal to when I find a bar that has Boddington’s on draft. So I was pretty excited.
Before I started I made a little pattern to make it easier to modify in the future:

Then I applied interfacing to both exterior fabrics and quilted the neon green fabric. I also double interfaced the pockets and put fusible fleece on the interior panels:

After putting in the zipper, I was really happy with the weight of the clutch. There are four credit card slots and a bill pocket:

I think I’ve conquered the zipper.

Zippers can’t get me down

Emily — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 23:59:01 +0000

This is the first of two posts about making zippered clutches. For the first one, I used some thin and inexpensive fabric and only batting, no fusible fleece or interfacing. It was my first try with quilting. Thankfully no one was watching while I struggled with a ruler on the sewing machine. It’s a work in progress.

I also decided to install a zipper for the first time. I basically just sewed it in there. Very classy.

I’m using this as my wallet right now because it goes nicely with Carhartts and winter boots. But I discovered that I needed to learn how to properly install a zipper, more on that later. Also, fusible fleece and interfacing are necessities because a floppy bag leads to cell phones and credit cards falling out of your wallet. I’m talking from experience here. So this is my first effort. You don’t want to start off too good, because then the expectations are really high for number 2.