My lovely friend Kaitlyn recently took a trip home to the USA and when she came home I was lucky enough to be presented with a very cute gift. Kaitlyn had bought me a super cute fat quarter bundle of geometric gold and silver prints and it was love at first sight! The fabric is a reasonably heavy weight cotton and it’s been sort of screen printed with metallic paint.
I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to use my fat quarters for until I unwrapped one from the bundle and had a brain wave. Why not combine the gold with some brown leather from my scrap leather collection?
For me these two are a match made in heaven! I still can’t quite get over the fact I can buy a bag of scrap leather for 5 euros! You get some quite large pieces in there and I love the fact I find uses for them and they don’t end up thrown away! Also real leather really gives what you make an high quality touch! In my mind this pairing was crying out for a chunky gold and brown zipper – it just had to be done! I lined the bag with one of the silver geometric fat quarter prints, so it’s geometric metallics a-go-go!
I basically made up making this as I went along. I cut the fabric pieces based on the zipper width and then just tried to work from my leather scrap in terms of good proportions.
Check out my cute new scissors by the way in the above picture! Had to get them in there! For reference though – my cute new scissors only cut fabric. I find the best thing for cutting leather is a craft knife!
I stitched the leather pieces to the fabric pieces to make the two sides of the bags. I top stitched the leather to give a professional finish.
This project came together just fine with a few minor rushing related mishaps, including breaking one of my leather sewing needles by trying to sew over my metallic zipper teeth (idiot!) Apart from the growing pains though I love the finished product! I’m currently using it to house all my make up, and am slightly regretting not making it bigger and using it as a clutch handbag! I’ve still got some fat quarters left in silver … so maybe a combination with black leather … hmmm ….. I’m feeling another project coming on!
Amy's Atelier 