Hot off the machine

Here are a couple new ones...
Heavy brown floral rounded purse; and small gold tote. The gold one is sort of a sister bag to one I made previously with a similar fabric (now owned by Nicole). But as usual, it's still one of a kind. with different color scheme, accent fabric and different proportions. Remember, no patterns here!

All this for 7 bucks!

Hit the neighborhood garage sales yesterday and got some cool stuff..... heavy men's jean jacket (XL means LOTS of fabric); girls puffy red vest; Hello Kitty pajama pants; a big coffee mug for Matt since he keeps stealing mine; and two necklaces. Fabric stuff goes into the washing machine, mug into the dishwasher and the pendant necklace got a new cord and I wore it to a party last night! FUN!!!

I've been adding to my fabric collection lately with some stuff that has great potential.... but the way I operate, I'll catch a glimpse of a certain fabric in my stash and all of a sudden I'm cutting away and then OOPS, I realize I should have taken a picture to show what the fabric was before it started to become one of my bags. So, here are some 'before' pix... I don't have any immediate plans for any of it, but you never know when the inspiration will hit and then it'll be too late.

• Blue coat - heavy canvas-like material, with cool embroidered flowers
• Cute red coat from my coworker cleaning out her closet before she moves (thanks, Cherese!)
• Green velvety dress that I bought from a resale shop. I added the brown at the bottom because it was too short... still have yet to wear it but I think it'd make a really cute bag!
• Men's heavy canvas like gold jean jacket - sweet score from a garage sale (see garage sale post)
• Red girls down vest - garage sale; I saw the puffy down squares and invisioned an ipad case or something like that.

Research... yeah, that's it.

I finally figured it all out - the reason why I still feel the need to keep buying purses, when I can actually make them.... it's all in the name of research! Yeah, that's what I'll call it anyway! I get lots of ideas and inspiration from the bags and purses I see everywhere... it's only natural that I'd want to have some of them, right? So here are some of my recent acquisitions for my 'studies' in pursemaking. All but the two on the right are from garage sales, bought for a couple bucks here and there; the ivory purse in front is from Catching Fireflies in Berkley, MI (one of my favorite local stores); the orange one is from a cute little shop - part new/part resale - in Caseville, MI called Jade's Closet.