Meagan's How To: How to Make a Cute Purse (part 2)

I am sorry that I did not get this posted before. Life took over for a few days. I have had sick kids in the family and so took some time to get them better.

I hope you enjoyed the first part of my blog on making these little purses. Now that I have ironed out the kinks of the pattern and instructions and can share it with you.

Before, we finished the interfacing, darts and adding the facing.
Step 7: Starting the Zipper
You need to whipstitch the zipper tape together on the upper end.

Step 8: Prickstitch?
Say what? I did this step as suggested the first time and it sucked. It took a lot of time, made a mess of the zipper and the benefit was minimal. It is supposed to keep the zipper in place until you sew it. I skipped this step for the next 2 purses and was much happier.

You have to whipstitch it by hand and knot each stitch, which left strings everywhere for the sewing machine to catch on.

Step 9-11: Creating The Tabs
These steps can be done at any time, but I found it odd to work on the zipper in 8, put it down to do these steps and then finish it in 14. Their steps are also a little strange for the tabs. I did it differently.
First, cut out your 2 tab squares. No need to transfer the lines that were put on the pattern.

I did it the first time (again, I like to follow instructions), however, I found that it was pointless. This was a waste of time. They wanted you to turn in at these lines, press, and glue or baste in place. Then fold, press and sew again. Silly!

Instead, I did this:

Sooo much easier and such a time saver.

Fold the square in half and sew right sides together (inside out) about 1/2" in. This change saved about 20 minutes or more per purse! Then, turn right sides out. I ended up doing a double stitch since this is what the strap holds onto.

Another thing that I did was to do the strap at the same time as the tabs, but they do not do them until step 26, so I will leave it until later. Just know that you can do these early

Step 12 - D-Ring
Insert the newly created tab through the D-Ring. They have you baste, but you don't need to.

Step 13 - Attach Tab
Again, they made this step so much harder than it needed to be, not to mention weaker. They wanted you to stitch it here and then later hand stitch the opening. Yuck! Way too much hand stitching listed for this project. Hand stitching should be avoided at all costs, so instead I stitched it to the outside and then sewed in place. I should look like this:

Use the machine to sew into place on one side of purse. When you sew purse closed later, you will sew right over this and hence machine sew in place.

Step 14 - Sew Zipper
For this you need a zipper foot for your machine. This allows you to sew right up to the edge of the zipper. Change the foot on your machine.
Open Zipper. Stitch front and back sections together at sides and lower edge. Instead of the whole whipstitch thing, I merely pinned the zipper in place and sewed! In this step, they merely want you to sew the outer purse closed. I sewed it all the way closed, including the upper portion with the tabs.

Steps 15-17 - The Pocket

Start by pressing the upper edge of your pocket IN 1/4", then take that same edge and turn it OUT along fold line.

You will then need to stitch ends and trim. After you have turned the upper edge to inside, it will look like this:

You will need to press in all the edges in, folding in the fullness at the corners

The last part is to sew close to inner pressed edge.

Steps 18 & 19 - Adding Pocket to Lining
Pin the pocket to the front of the lining sections, matching large circles on the pattern. Stitch close to sides and lower edge. Stitch along stitching line to create a divider within the pocket (like for a phone or ipod). Reinforce inner corners of upper edge.