July 11, 2009

bridesmaid gifts

early in the planning process, i fell in love with this wedding from martha stewart weddings magazine. loved everything about it. especially loved this:


the bride had clutches made for each of her bridesmaids from fabric that matched each girl's personality. FABULOUS! had to do it. except i had to do it myself. obviously. nevermind that i hadn't touched a sewing machine since i made a felt pillow for my american girl doll circa 1992. game on. so i borrowed my mother-in-law's machine, set up shop in the guest room and started trolling the interweb for patterns. and came up empty. i had a specific vision, as usual, and couldn't find a pattern in any store or any website. i did find a pattern for a big shoulder-strap purse that i liked. so, with my extensive years of seamstressy knowledge (not) i set about modifying it. from a giant shoulder-strap purse. into a clutch. by myself. so i could make 10 of them. oh and i didn't actually start until may. i told you you'd roll your eyes at me.

but it worked! after 2 prototypes, i settled on my design. then i cut out a bazillion pattern pieces of fabric and lining, like so:


and ironed interfacing onto the linings:


and accidentally burned the bejezus out of my hand when i picked up the hot iron sideways and spilled scalding steam water....

and pleated the outside fabric and sewed it all together:


and made pockets with little tags that i had made on etsy from my silhouette:


and cut and cut and ironed and ironed and sewed and sewed until my little fingers about fell off


and ta-da!






not perfect, but i think they turned out pretty decent :)

3 comments:

maribeth said...

love it! cute project, cute fabrics & cute bag!

Anonymous said...

i saw one of these in person & it was terribly adorable! la, you could start a business--I would so buy one of these from you :)

BamaT1212 said...

those are seriously so amazing. great job, lala.