Envelope Clutch DIY

One of my favorite sewing blogs is See Kate Sew.  She just oozes creativity and always has a new pattern for you to try.  Last week she announced a clutch sew-a-long.  I’ve never participated in a sew-a-long, but I’ve always wanted to try it.  Basically, Kate has offered a free pattern for an adorable envelope clutch and nearly 200 people signed up to sew it!  She has encouraged everyone to customize it and has featured some ideas on how to make it your own.

I decided to try free motion machine embroidery on my bag.  I’ve been wanting to try it, but thought I would have to buy a special foot for my machine.  Well, low and behold, it came with one!  I just didn’t know what it was.  Ha!  So I found some scrap material and tried it out.  I thought a messy flower/loopy design would be relatively easy and hide any flaws.

My first attempt was okay-ish from the front, horrid from the back.  Just look at that!  It ate up half of my bobbin thread!  After some research, I found out that you had to pull up the bobbin thread to the front of your work so this doesn’t happen.

Next attempt – YIKES.  I’d rather have the bobbin mess.  It puckered like crazy.

Third attempt – much better.  I pinned some felt to the back of the material as a stabilizer and it really helped.  It gave it more of a quilting feel, which I loved!

I practiced for about fifteen minutes and then just decided to go for it.  I grabbed some plain gray cotton, filled up a bobbin with black quilting thread, pieced together some wool felt as a backing, and made a lot of coffee to help give me courage.

I cut my material into a square several inches larger than the clutch pattern to give me some leeway when I was ready to cut out the pattern.  Then I pinned the material to the felt, trying my best to smooth out the wrinkles.  I embroidered the flowers and swirls in strips, never stopping the line of sewing.  It was pretty easy to minimize fabric bunching that way.  Again, this is my first time attempting this, so if you’re a pro and I’m doing it completely wrong, just smile and nod.  Ha!

After many hours of stitching later, I had a bag!  Oh boy, I had so much fun making this!  I tried several new things in this project besides the machine embroidery.

Like a welt pocket with an exposed zipper!  Except I’m not zooming in on this guy.  It’s pretty rough around the edges.  But, how cute is that zipper and zipper pull?  My Bibi gave me a pile of vintage zippers and I love when I can use them in a project.

Other firsts in this bag were the magnetic snaps and sewing with interfacing.  I ended up having to use heavy interfacing instead of the midweight that Kate recommended.  It wasn’t the easiest to sew with, but it gave the bag a lot of structure.

All in all, I’m so happy with this bag.  I love the way the pattern is designed.  If you’d like to make one for yourself, you can find Kate’s free pattern here.

Did any of you participate in the sew-a-long?  Or have you participated in one before?  It’s a fun way to do a project because you have a definite goal date to finish by.  I also like seeing how other people customize the pattern.

What about free motion machine embroidery?  Have you tried it?  Any tips or tricks for it?  Because I’m pretty sure I want to add loopy machine flowers to everything now.  Someone tell Timothy to hide his dress shirts.

~Whitney