Tag Archive

I have a thing for bags and purses and wallets. I don’t know why.

Some people like shoes. Me, I love bags. When I enter a shoe shop, I gravitate almost involuntarily towards the bag section (yes, we have bags in the shoe shops, even if leather is no longer the major raw material used for either bags or shoes). My husband can spend hours looking for that perfect footwear, but I have very specific shoe requirements (flat or no heels, sandals and open toe and not slippers and not closed shoes, no bling and preferably brown or black. Fussy? Me? Nah!). Plus my feet are small. Which makes finding shoes to fit and suit can be difficult and I usually end up buying the same brand and same sort. Which also means I can reject whole walls full of displays at a glance.

Whatever the reason, I am not a shoe person.

Bags, on the other hand…

You look at a bag and you think of the possibilities for each of the compartments! The pockets, the opportunities!

I don’t have a room filled with bags, but I do have about 6 or 7 of them, which is weird because I hate to change bags when I go out. I’m afraid that I will leave something vital in the one I changed from that I will need and not have.

One solution, of course, would be to buy one of those bag organisers (or make one).

A dear friend once sent me one. I even used it for a while. And still have it. But no longer use it.

Oh, the possibilities!

When I talk about the possibilities of the compartments of the bag, I am not being totally honest. Because, as with shoes, I like my bags to be of a kind, too. I don’t like those bags that are divided at the top with more than one zip. (There must be One Zip to Rule Them All). Or ones with zips for pockets on the outside that go from top to bottom (won’t things fall out?)

Then I look at backpacks/rucksacks and wonder at all the jangly bits of hardware that seem to hang off them, serving no useful purpose that I can see in the usual urban commuting milieu where they (the backpacks I see) abound.

Plus I have this strange problem, where, no matter what, one strap of the handbag always slides off my shoulder. Likely because I’m round shouldered. Surely there can’t be a universal conspiracy to ensure that straps are never the same length.

Wallets as well

Anyhow. All of this is a long lead-up to showcase one of the patterns for a bag-like thing I love. A wallet pattern by Carla Peicheff of Carla’s Creations, called the Slimline Wallet.

I made several, in batches and singly.

Range of accent colours

A set of six

Slimline cork wallets

These are all in cork, of course.

A new material

Cork is exciting, because it’s different. On the international scene, it seems to be a very popular material. But it doesn’t seem to have percolated to India. Not our thing? Rexine rules here still.

Over the past few months, I’ve bought different sorts of alternates to cloth, such as the aforementioned rexine (which I discovered is a brand name that is now applied to many kinds of faux leather-y types of fabrics in India). Printed materials, textured ones. Thick ones, thin ones. Floppy ones, stiff ones.

They aren’t all easy to sew with, and while they have body, they don’t have structure (the product is substantial, yet may not stand up on its own).

I find the cork I used to be very easy to sew on and through. It doesn’t stick to the presser foot and the needle passes through smoothly.

What makes this pattern special, though, is that your exterior, showcase material is only sewn with right at the end. Which means that for special fabrics (?) like cork or faux leather, the pain only comes at the end. Besides, since this has a slim profile, you aren’t actually sewing through so many layers, either. You don’t have to fight your machine with every stitch.

Cool fresh green

This wallet fits up to 12-15 cards and currency notes, and has two slip pockets. It closes with a magnetic closure and the coin pocket shuts with a zipper. I can’t fit my iPhone 7 into one of the slip pockets and the wallet still retains a slim profile. The photo on the right below shows the wallet closed with the iPhone in place.

With an iPhone 7 in the slip pocket

Canvas slimlime wallet

And I can’t tell you how much I love the feel of it in my hand. It doesn’t hurt my hand to carry this slim thing.

Easy to modify

The pattern is easy to modify, as well. Someone wanted the flap to extend over the full width, so I modified it accordingly, and used only one snap instead of two. I think this red print and the off-white canvas combination is gorgeous, don’t you?

Inside of Slimline Wallet

(Unfortunately, the lady decided she didn’t like the red, so I still have this in stock for some lucky owner to claim it.)

I could uploads tons more pictures, and just looking at these makes me want to go off and cut out several more, but work, alas, calls. No bread and butter for me otherwise!

Do you have a favourite bag/purse/wallet pattern? Why do you love it? Even if you don’t make your own, perhaps there’s a design you like? Show me!