Wabi-Sabi Purse

In my last post, I showed you some fabulous pink fabric I had to have!  And I said I was going to do something simple with it. I wanted a quick turn around.  Well, I did get quick and well, kind of simple.

I decided upon the super cute "Pretty Little Purse" from  Judi Ketteler's Sew Retro Book.

Here's the thing.  Whenever I jump into a project, I REALLY do just jump in. I KNOW you are supposed to read through the entire thing, but if I get too many steps in my head, I tend to work ahead which can sometimes end up in disaster.  What can I say sewing REALLY excites me!

So I look at the picture and I say OK, I understand the gist of this, now let's do it. And doing it I was, UNTIL...

1) This is an extremely tiny purse as is and the designer is asking you to iron inside the bag... UM NO! That was just not going to happen, AND I had actually ENLARGED the pattern!  Still, no.

2) The entire section on handles and finishing just threw me for a loop! I was not planning on finishing the edges using bias tape (even though I mastered this as I said before). Again, because I am going by the picture and I am not seeing any use of bias tape for the bag edges, this had never even entered my mind as a way of finishing this bag.

Given these to things, I ended up a little bit baffled and a lot annoyed!

So I just did what I am super-d-duper good at and improvised!

I also wanted my handles a little bit further apart and with a little bit more sophistication, so I went with pre-made pink vinyl. I actually had not planned on going that far at all, I did so at the urging of family and friends.

Perhaps the most fatal mistake of this bag though is in the pattern its self. I KNEW the bottoms of the body and pocket did not match and yet I trusted the designer and went with it. UGH!  I should have corrected the pattern.

So when I turned the bag, I saw to my horror, that the pocket was totally lopsided! I was so disappointed. But again, when I showed it to family and friends, they pointed out the beauty of this Wabi-Sabi purse...

The roses look as though they are peeking out of the pocket:

 

I really mean no disrespect to the designer, this is a really cute design and I am just in love with it as well as most of the designs in her book, I mean, why else would I have purchased it.

I will be trying this pattern out again, with some modifications.