Wristlet

This page is under construction. There are pictures which I will put in.

I got the idea from Craft Daisy's makeup bag. I explained to my husband that it was exactly the same, except I made mine a different shape, constructed it differently, and added a wrist strap. He nodded politely as one does when people say crazy stuff.

This is moderately easy. It's all straight-line sewing, but there are some tight spots to stitch in, and a lot of the stitching ends up showing. If you sew it up for a small child of course they will not care what your stitching looks like, but it might bother you.

I've made two of these (soon to be three as according to Opal, Henry needs one too). The first one is Opal's doggy bag (I made it with the intention of putting her small plastic dogs in it, and it has dogs on it, but she keeps money or rocks, whichever she's finding more important at the moment, in it). The doggy bag is roughly 4 inches wide at the top by 6 inches deep, a good coin purse size but tiresome to sew. The second one I made because she wanted a bigger one.

Supplies:

1. 2 squares of outside fabric at least 4" x 6" (the big one in the pictures is 7.5" wide and 8.%" high) and the same amount of lining fabric and if you like, interfacing.
2. About 18 inches of wide ribbon for the wrist strap (enough to go around a hand easily plus enough to go around the bag plus 2 times the seam allowance).
3. A strip of narrow velcro the size of the top opening of the wristlet.

The basic principle is

1. Cut an outside, a lining, and if you like interfacing, all the same size. For the doggy bag, I cut 2 rectangles of outside, 2 of lining, no interfacing; for the bigger bag I cut one doublesize rectangle of outside, one of lining, one of interfacing. I did separate pieces for the doggy bag so that I could center a dog on each and also because the lining was a scrap that wasn't big enough to cut the whole thing from.
   1. If you are using interfacing, handle it along with the outside fabric. Just sew the two of them together with the interfacing on the wrong side.
   2. If you are using 2 pieces, sew up one side seam on the outsides.
2. Sew the side seam (or seams) of the lining fabric.
3. Fold the ribbon in half (right sides to right sides if there are any) and put it inside the outside fabric, with its ends lined up with the edge of the fabric where it will be just below the top after you sew a seam in the top (so, maybe an inch from the current top if you are using 5/8 seams, or more like 3/4 of an inch if you're using a serger -- accuracy is not that big a deal here). You are going to sew it into the remaining side seam of the outside fabric. You are then going to bring it around the bag and sew it down, so that if somebody should happen to fill the bag with rocks and spin it around their head by the strap, the stress will be against a bunch of non-structural and strong seams, and not against the insertion point. Rest assured that this will be easier to understand when I put in the pictures. I do have pictures. You could just sew a shorter strap into the seam and be done with it if you knew the bag was going to be treated gently.
4. Put the lining inside the tube of the outside, right sides to right sides, and sew the top seam.
5. Turn the lining to the inside and press the top edge.
6. Turn the purse inside out and sew the velcro in. The ribbon will probably cover the bottom seam. If you are making this for a small child, trust me, put velcro all the way across, not a little tab in the middle. Otherwise you are asking for lost treasures.
7. Turn the purse rightside out again, put the strap over it, and sew the strap down on each side of the purse. Put an extra seam just off the body of the purse to hold the loop of the strap together.
8. Turn the purse inside out AGAIN, put all the layers together, and sew across the bottom.
9. Gusset the bottom by folding the side seam down to meet the bottom seam and sewing across the triangle this makes on each side (if you have only one side seam, you will have to eyeball the other side).
10. Turn it rightside out a final time and heave a sigh of relief.