Reclaimed Retrobellish Purses
The following articles feature stylish purses made from reclaimed materials. These reclaimed purses were each featured blog posts in recent years. Each article describes the purse in an introductory paragraph followed by a link to the rest of the article including additional pictures.
Make Your Own Recycled Fabric Knitted PurseIt all started when I watched a craft show about knitting with fabric. The show featured a lady who sewed a simple summer dress in a smooth beautiful floral colored cotton fabric. The beautiful summer dress had an empire waistline, and although the top portion of the dress was fashioned in a tube top style, it had the most beautiful braided-like texture, and it tied at the shoulders with thin straps. The lady explained that she had created this beautiful texture by knitting it with strips created from the same floral fabric. I couldn’t believe how beautiful the dress looked. I immediately knew that I wanted to try this technique, although it would probably be on a smaller scale, and I came up with the idea of a small knitted purse.
White Crocheted Pearl Purse
Just when I thought I couldn’t find any other type of fiber thread to crochet with, I found this Twisted Mason’s String Line in many colors at our local home improvement store. One of the pros I liked about this nylon string is that it’s very strong and lends itself to making very strong crochet pieces such as purses and straps. Other great qualities about this string is that it’s so soft to the touch and crocheting with it creates a great thick texture and an incredible satin sheen. It’s also waterproof.
Reclaimed Fabric Paris Theme Purse
This small evening purse was made from the reclaimed fabric of a bridesmaid dress that I know I’ll never wear again. In the past, I’ve donated bridesmaid dresses, but there were only a few that I just couldn’t part with because the dress fabric was so beautiful. I saved these dresses, took my time taking them apart, saving the zippers, buttons and fabrics. As a big fan of all things Paris, I decided that I would use this beautiful pink silky fabric to make a Paris themed purse. The first thing that came to mind was the Eiffel Tower, so I decided to make an Eiffel Tower of sequins. I really didn’t know how this would turn out, but thought I’d give it a try.
Cigar Box Folk Art Purse
Cigar box purses were once very popular and a great way to reuse these great boxes made out of wood or chipboard that could be used for a multitude of craft projects from jewelery boxes to purses. We used some of these for a lot of our folk art projects where we painted city and farm scenes on the boxes. The box featured here is an abstract rendition of our city of Chicago’s famous landmarks. And although this purse was used as folk art, some of our other pieces were functional purses lined inside with velour fabric and a small mirror.
Baby Shower Corsage
I have always enjoyed making baby shower items such as centerpieces, umbrellas and corsages using reclaimed items. I was inspired to make this baby shower corsage by looking at pictures of beautiful natural flower corsages. Since I didn’t know the baby’s gender, I decided to use neutral light colors in all the materials I chose. I looked in my craft box and found remnants I had left over from other projects. I had a cream colored silk flower, a small piece of lacey trim, a small piece of white tuling, a few swatches of soft flannel fabric, a small pierced wooden bead for the head, leftover piece of interface and a strand of white ribbon.
I started by making a base. I cut an oval shape from a sturdy piece of interface, and then cut a slightly larger oval shape from flannel fabric, then repeated and cut out a second oval shape from the remaining flannel swatch. I placed the interface piece in between the two oval flannel pieces and sewed around the edges to seal the interface inside. I then sewed the tuling and lacey trim remnant all the way around the edge of the base, which softened the look of the base. For a little more texture and color, I cut two small round pieces of flannel–one in pink and one in blue and placed these place behind the flower.
I then cut flower petals from a cream colored silk flower, cutting as close to the flower’s base as possible. I assembled the petals in piles according to their size. I placed a large flower petal in the upper center part of the base and hand sewed it onto the base. I then continued sewing the larger petals to either side of the center petal. I continued sewing the next size petals in layers until I formed a pretty floral shape.
I painted a little face on the wooden bead using craft acrylic paints. While the paint dried, I wrapped a little shape of flannel fabric into a little roll and sewed the edge to seal the tiny bundle. I then took the painted wooden bead and sewed the bead into one end of the little flannel bundle. I sewed a tiny lacey remnant on the flannel around the head. Next I pulled the sewing needle through the center flower petal, through the base, and through the baby bundle several times to anchor the bundle. I then sewed the rest of the flower petals around the baby bundle until it looked like the baby bundle was enclosed inside of the flower. I then made a ribbon bow and sewed it onto the bottom of the corsage. I was very pleased with the outcome and the mother-to-be really enjoyed wearing it. Although I used leftover remnants, you can use your imagination to make your own special piece.
Upcycled Mens Suit
The inspiration for this project came to me while cleaning out David’s closet this fall. We were taking down the summer clothes for the winter when I came across a few of David’s old suit jackets from his younger days which he had outgrown many moons ago. We decided to donate most all the clothes in the closet to the Salvation Army except a few pieces I decided to keep to upcycle. One was this navy-blue suit jacket and the other was an old pair of jeans. I have always loved to embellish the lapels of my jackets and I had an idea to use the jeans to make a hand painted applique for this suit.
I started out by trying on the jacket, pinning it to a length I liked and cut the suit 14 inches from the bottom edge using pinking shears to prevent the fabric from fraying. To create a smooth bottom edge, I measured a 1/4 inch hem, sewed it, and then used a cool iron. I then used a pencil and plain paper (taping a second piece of paper) to trace each lapel and part of the neckline area. I then carefully cut out a pattern for each side. I took the paper patterns and pinned them onto the denim. Using tailor’s chalk, I added a 1/4″ inch hem all the way around, then cut out the denim shapes. I sewed the denim pieces onto the jacket and carefully sewed on the neckline pieces as well. I also used extra denim pieces and leftover buttons from this jacket project to embellish the pocket. For further embellishment, I used a dark navy-blue permanent fabric marker to draw vines and leaf shapes onto the lapels and neckline.
When I had tried on the jacket, I knew the sleeves had to be shortened, so I left these for last. I measured the length that I liked, pinned the sleeves a bit longer for a hem, removed the buttons from each sleeve cuff, and cut the sleeves with my pinking shears. I sewed the hem, ironed and sewed on the buttons. I used what I had available to me at the time, but this project could also be accomplished with an old coat, a woman’s suit jacket or blazer. Thank you for stopping by! Just have fun and create your own.
Upcycled Blue and White Floral Jacket
This project started out with two thrift store finds. One was a beautiful blue and white floral cotton dress with a great looking lace edged collar. The other was a plain white cotton jacket. The idea I had was to take the collar from the dress (since it was a size that didn’t fit me), and add it to the jacket. The beautiful floral pattern dress had a lot of potential and lent itself to many other projects because of the extra full fabric bottom.
I started out by carefully cutting out the collar from the dress and leaving about an inch of extra fabric all the way around the collar edge. This would help me position the collar more evenly with the jacket collar and have extra fabric on which to sew it more securely to the jacket. I then started pinning the dress collar to the jacket neckline area and decided to cut away some of the jacket collar to remove bulk. Once the collar was evenly positioned I started pinning it to the jacket so I could begin to sew the two together. This worked out well and looked very nice when completed.
Next, I measured the length of the full skirt-part of the dress (from the waist to the bottom edge) and then measured the jacket from under the left front collar center opening (down the center) to the bottom edge. I then repeated the same process on the right side center jacket opening. I thought that a two inch wide strip of floral fabric would look good adorning each open edge of the jacket. I cut a six inch strip from the dress doing my best (by eye) to pick the same floral pattern on the dress for each side of the jacket. I folded each floral strip (by eye) to a width that looked nicely balanced when placed on the jacket edge, and then I pinned it down. Then I measured the strip and ironed it, which made it so much easier to make the second matching strip for the other jacket edge. I loved how the blue and white floral fabric strips looked on the jacket. It turned out rather well and can be worn with a pair of white shorts, pants, light blue shorts or even jeans.
Because I have so much of the blue and white floral fabric left over, I think I will try making a camisole to wear with the jacket. I might even take one of my white camisoles and make a floral strip to add to the top edge of the camisole (definitely a future post). One could also take fabric strips and glue them to a belt to make an accent piece with a jacket. In the past, I’ve even used fabrics I liked on old shoes. So have fun and don’t hesitate to take two of your old pieces and by combining them, see how you can recreate a new piece of your very own. Nothing perfect here, no exact science, just have fun and be yourself.
Something Blue Pouch
something blue
This little whimsical lace and blue-cream fabric pouch started out from some leftover fabric remnants. I’m always on the lookout for small projects that I can make from leftover remnants of fabrics that I’ve saved from my numerous craft projects. I’m a sucker when it comes to fabrics and could never pass up a beautiful piece of fabric I really like, no matter how small. The bad part is that I could never throw away small leftover pieces of fabric. A few years back, I painted a tree of life for my niece’s wedding and it got me thinking about giving her a small handmade token of some kind, since we don’t have any heirloom piece in our family.
One of the traditions that came to mind was “something borrowed, something blue”. This is a tradition that dates back to the Victorian era, and each word in the famous poem really has a warm and touching meaning. So I decided to make her something blue, and not the more traditional things like jewelry, a hanky or a piece of clothing. I decided to make her this small simple keepsake and a bit of an abstract pouch (pictured above) that could be used to insert the traditional silver sixpence coin or any small silver piece, her favorite fragrance flower pedals or even potpourri. The pretty blue and cream floral print fabric is from a vintage fabric I reclaimed from an old dress.
I loved the floral print of this blue and cream colored dress, and carefully cut the dress into 4″ x 4″ squares, being careful to cut around the flower clusters in the fabric’s pattern. I folded the square in half, sewed the edges together to form a small pouch, cut a blue heart shape from a reclaimed pair of blue jeans, another (slightly larger) heart shape from a cream colored textured cotton fabric, and cut a small white piece of lace on which to rest the blue denim heart. Once I sewed and tacked these pieces together, I took a small cream colored fresh water pearl (leftover from another craft project) and sewed it in the center of the denim heart, again sewing through all the fabric layers to keep everything together.
Although I used small beautiful remnant fabrics and the pearl for this project, a special and meaningful gift can be created from any kind fabrics or even reclaimed pieces of clothing you love.