Before I start an apology, things have been a bit manic over the last few weeks and though I've been doing my projects I haven't posted them. Instead of posting all at once, I'm having a weekend posting marathon instead, starting with. . .
Heartbreak Clutch Bag
My favourite going out bag. A 60’s chainmail white clutch. It’s a decent size unlike a lot of the modern ones, with a sexy slimline shape with an envelope style fastening. It broke. Which broke my heart. bad times. So how did I mend my broken heart (I mean bag), read on dear chums to see . . .
Ingredients
One beautiful but broken clutch bag.
An old pair of black beaded clip on earrings
one large art deco black button
one shiny diamond shaped button
Here is the broken bag, look how sad it is, let’s give it an art deco lift. . .
Here’s a close up of the breakage, you can see roughly where the ruching should fall
You can see how the rest of the bag (which is still in perfect condition) looks, I love this white chain mail, it feels so luxurious, all cold and metal and clinking.
I considered quite a few different things to try and patch it up, from an old fan brooch to a sweet little picture of a chinese scene, but the art deco earrings and buttons won my heart in the end.
a close up of my chosen earrings, a lovely pair of black art deco beaded leaf designs. They remind me of film noir and dark red lipstick.
Love this button, perfect art deco style with the three swirls each side.
I tried (in vain) at first to thread these on, however it just didn’t work. The metal had no “cling” so I couldn’t cast on properly and I think the thread would have worn against the metal pretty quickly and dropped off. Onto plan B then
So I took out the earring clips. This was really easy as they backs are leather and the clips were just slotted in, so with a bit of wiggling they came out quite happily. This gave me a flat surface to work with instead of the clip showing underneath
Hurrah for my glue gun. I try to sew everything when I possibly can, because I think it’s just a better quality, but hot glue really was the best option here, as it stuck beautifully to the leather of the earrings, the metal of the chain mail and the buttons of course.
Aww my heart’s all mended. Life is good when you turn you favourite bag into an even more favourite version of it’s self. YAY (hopefully you can see that I tried to stick the original ruching as closely as possible from the first photo)
Take a bow bag, the people have seen enough now. It sure is pretty though. I shall be giving this it’s first outing at the monthly rock ‘n’ roll night.
I hope you enjoyed my heartbreak bag project, see you tomorrow for project 13
