My Ma is a whizz at cross stitch and is always making me fun bits and pieces to put in my sewing. Recently, as a "gift", I bought her Subversive Cross Stitch By Julie Jackson, which contains some designs that perhaps aren't suitable for your mother! Mum duly whipped me up the fab "Whatever" design and I had to decide what to make with it.
I thought that a mini purse would be fun. Except that I hate working with zips. This loathing notwithstanding, I duly cut the cross stitch design to 4" by 4.5" and found a matching blue floral piece for the back of the purse. I used a pink floral in the same range for the lining and a white zip. I applied iron-on interfacing on the outer pieces to give the purse some substance and help prevent the cross stitch fraying.
There appears to be many ways to construct a lined zip pouch, but I decided to start by laying the zip down on the front right side of the purse with the lining underneath, wrong sides together. I repeated this with the back of the purse using the zipper foot on my sewing machine.
Now, for the tricky part. I hate the bit where you have to sew over the teeth of the zipper, having lost a sewing machine needle to a zipped pouch only the other week. No incidents this time though. In my wisdom, I thought it would be better to sew round the outer pieces of the purse and the lining separately (right sides together) and then tuck the lining into the purse. Due to a lack of spacial awareness, I managed to seal the zip between the outer purse and the lining. Oops!
I duly unpicked the bottom seam of the lining. I could then turn the purse the right way out. I folded over the two sides of the unpicked seam of the lining. and sewed them together. This gave a visible but neat seam. I could then finally tuck the lining in as planned. Yay!
I was slightly perturbed that the top of the purse seemed much rounder than it started out, but I think this is just from trying to cram a fairly thick zip into a fairly tiny space?
To finish off, I added a teapot charm for my zipper pull. I always think a nice zipper charm makes up for a multitude of dodgy stitching in the actual purse...
I shall see what ma thinks when I take my creation round tonight. Wish me luck!
Melx
No comments:
Post a Comment