Sunday, January 18, 2009

Felted purse almost done....

Here is where I finally got the handles on. Never tried this I-cord with plastic tubing in it, so thought this would be interesting.








Then I stitched up the bottom of the purse with a whip stitch and wove in all the loose ends. The purse started out at 18" wide x 13 " in height. Then I went through the felting process in the washer with "hot" water.
Six minutes later it was 20" wide and 11" in height. (That seems so wrong as it is supposed to be getting small, but for some reason, mine was getting wider)
Five minutes later it was 19 x10.
Five minutes after that it was 18 x 9.
Then five minutes after that it was 17 x 9.
It finally got to the point that I liked the look of the felting and I was having a little trouble with the ruffle getting a little wonky, so I didn't want to go any further. Also, to top it off, the plastic tubing had broken free from the I-cord, so I thought I better quit while I was ahead. The tweed yarn wasn't shrinking as fast as the ruffle, so now I have a tighter opening to the purse with a wider bottom which is not the way the picture shows, but I am pretty pleased with how it turned out (other than the problem with the handles which I am sure is fixable).
So here it is stuffed with newspaper until it dries. Once it is totally dry, I will fuss with the handles to see what I can do to fix them and then I am going to run to a local decorator fabric store and buy something amazing to line it with. I will have to crochet a loop and add a button to the top of the purse for the closure.
After all this waiting around at the washer, I decided to do some hand applique, so here is the Hearts and Hands block I had prepped yesterday.

That's it for now. On to something else until the felted purse is all dried out.

1 comment:

  1. The purse turned out beautiful. I can't wait to see it all finished. Those little Hearts & Hand blocks are so cute.

    ReplyDelete

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