I have no idea how long this took from conception to design to end-result. I worked on it periodically over a long time. I am pleased with it, though of course there are many learning curve things that didn’t turn out so well. The nature of the beast. This is the first and only thing (so far) that I have designed myself. Took in some tips and knowledge from others here on the forum, as well as practiced using patterns and instructions from a book that I bought. Looked at my own favorite purse made by Fossil to see how it was constructed. Finally figured out how to quickly make stitching holes by using a text path with letter ‘o’s in Affinity Designer (posted earlier in the forum). The outside turned out quite well. I lined the inside with a gorgeous cotton print fabric and it’s sort of pretty much a mess….but, I will still use this purse and be proud of what I’ve done. I will do it differently next time.
Veg tan leather dyed using Eco-Flo leather dyes. I played mad scientist and mixed dyes for what seemed like forever, trying to get the exact color I was after. This is not exactly it, but I still like it. In some of the photos, it looks bright purple, but that was just the lighting. It’s not that bright…much more muted….looking more like a purplish-brown instead like the last pictures below. The accent color is a muted martini olive green. It’s a bit disconcerting to see the huge difference in how lighting can present something like this.
I bought two of the smallest size needles I could get, John James sizes 2 and 4, plus some Ritza Tiger thread recommended by @cynd11 (thank you…it really IS good!). I used the size 4 needle and 0.6 size Ritza thread. Turns out I made the stitching holes way too close together which looks beautiful when finished, but took such a doggone long time to put together. A stitching pony really saved me with this part. It ended up being 12 spi……looks almost as good as machine stitching. I had to do the shoulder strap in two pieces and sew them together because it was too long for the bed to do it in one piece.
Thanks. As I said…I stand on the shoulders of giants. That Ritza thread is tough to find in the size and/or color you might want. I ended up going to an Etsy shop, which is where I was also able to find the smaller needles.
I engraved some fossil images on small pieces of rough sized slate that my brother had found…looked pretty darned cool. The photos are somewhere here on the forum.
Hawaii is probably the the one State bereft of fossils. Having paving slates with fish and trilobites walking up to the door would freak folk out enough. You could even tell folk that you fossilized the slate.
Wow, that really turned out great! So much stitching - my fingers hurt just looking at it! (but totally worth it - looks fantastic)
I really like the fabric you used for the liner too.
