Another Leather Purse

*For my entry for the Romance, My Way blog hop, please scroll down to the next post.*

A Very Special Project

I've decided to take a short break from posting about my writing.

It's been a while since I've shared pictures of my leather work, so I thought I'd talk about my latest project. Sarah, my daughter, was in love with my previous purse - the one made with the little crocheted circles. She requested I make her one for her birthday, and I thought it was a lovely idea. That was in...September. Her birthday is in October. I finally finished the purse last week ... halfway through February! Sarah was very patient, though. She said there was no hurry. She enjoyed seeing it grow each time she came to visit.

This is a close-up of the previous purse, the one that inspired Sarah's birthday purse

On the Sunday evening we started the project, we cleared off the kitchen table and made ourselves nice hot cups of tea. (Tea is an important piece of any project.) Then, I brought in my eight boxes of leather scraps and we pawed through them, looking for great color combinations. She was drawn to purples, and so that was what we built the color scheme from.

Next, we started sketching. She wanted a purse "the size of a big book", or big enough "so a book could fit into it", so we used that as a guide. We set her current purse on the table and measured it. Then we started drawing. The drawings (below) are crude, but we knew exactly what we had in mind.

It's hard to tell from the sketches, but the purse is designed to have a magnetic closure. Velcro was brought up as an option for a closure (by me), but discarded pretty quickly (by Sarah) - and she was right. The magnet was much nicer in the end. She wanted "lots of pockets", which I found to be a challenge because of the circle design, but I worked it out by stitching two pieces of supple black leather between the front and back sides to create three full-sized interior pockets.

Once we had the basic design figured out, I went to work. Every evening when the TV was on - I remember episodes of "Downton Abby" and several English Premier League football games - I cut out circles, punched holes, crocheted, and stitched. Little by little, it came together. Sarah approved of each section as it appeared.

And here it is!

And here is my beautiful daughter with the purse.

Love you, Sarah! It was a pleasure.