Feather Bag, Purse Contest 2011

Today is the last day to enter the A Lemon Squeezy Home Purse Contest! I put a lot of time and effort into my design and was able to finish the bag last night. I used this pattern by Lula Louise as a template and made several alterations. The La Jolla Sling from Lucky Brand, available here was also inspirational for me.

I purchased Dyer’s Fabric and used a potato stamp to print the diamond design for the body of the bag. Perusing the style magazines and blogs this last month, I noticed that Native print is in style this fall (see Billabong Fall 2011 and Hurley 2010). So I went with a native theme, after all - I am Native. I rounded the arm hole out more on the pattern and added the following: fusible fleece with extra strong interfacing on the bottom, cell phone pocket, pen pocket, swivel key ring, and a magnetic closure. The interior is a simple red with white polka-dot fabric. I used my Brother SE-350 to embroider my name inside, as I do on all my projects. I made the pockets freehand you could say, but they are similar to the pockets Amy Butler used in her Modern Diaper Bag (from her book Little Stitches for Little Ones) which was an earlier project I completed that you can see here.

The embellishments on the exterior were probably inspired by the 50+ blogs I follow. I have seen a lot of tutorials on how to make a tassel or braiding fabric necklaces and bracelets. I took some of my scrap materials from the bag and just started tying them on, gluing in feathers here and there. Overall, the bag turned out a little bigger than I really needed, but it’s nice to be able to carry my lunch! As you all know, Nola’s diaper bag can carry the kitchen sink. So this is a good medium size bag for shorter trips.

I will lovingly refer to my new bag as the Feather Bag. Try as I might to give it an interesting Salish name, there’s no way anyone will ever be able to pronounce those words. Check out this guide to Salish Pronunciation, our language is very guttural.