6TH POST: COPYING AN EVENING BAG

My daughter needed an evening bag that matched the formal ensemble I had made for her to wear to the wedding reception. So I made one with the scraps left from her skirt. First I found an evening bag I had that would hold her camera and that would look well with her outfit. The black bag in the picture on the left is the bag I copied. The silvery thing in front of the bag is a clear glass ball button that I sewn on the front of the copied bag to allow the bag to fasten. The black bag has a magnetic snap. I had a magnetic snap, but the instructions looked like putting the thing into the bag was going to be too much of a hassle. So in the copied bag I sewed a loop into the flap so that the loop would button over the ball button. 

In the picture above you can see the patterns I drafted from the copied bag’s measurements. The bag I was copying was heavily stiffened. Fortunately I had some very heavy stiffening left over from a picture hat I had made several years ago.

 

 

 

I was going to line the bag with left-over China silk, but when I exampled the bag I was copying I realized the same fabric had been used to make the inside as was used to make the outside of the bag. So I self-lined the bag. Here the pocket is being sewn into the bag’s lining. The copied bag had a fold in the pocket, so I copied that as well. The ruler is lying across the bottom of the pocket which has not yet been sewn.

 

The strap was made from covered cording. I cut the bias 1 ¼ inches wide from the left-over China silk lining from my daughter’s skirt. Note that I cut it between tracing paper, the only way to cut slippery silk with any success.

 

I turned the entire width of the bias cording inside with the tubing. I'm still amazed that the fabric allowed me to do that.

 

 

 

 

In this picture I am hand sewing the last seam inside the bag.  Other than that exception and the hand sewn button all sewing was done on the sewing machine.

 

Edge stitching finished the bag, forcing it to maintain its shape.

Here is the finished bag with the original bag I copied.

 

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