Why girls like to make their own handbags

What's in your handbag? If you're like me, a whole lot of stuff is in there. Stuff you need, stuff you picked up, stuff you've forgotten. I sometimes jokingly call my handbag "the black hole," because short of emptying it all out, I rarely can find the very thing I'm looking for.

So one day I just got sick of it. I like to sew, and there are free handbag patterns all over the web. I collected quite a few to compare, and decided that no one had made the purse I wanted. Thus, I just had to make my own.

I wasn't particular about color (which is really odd for me!), so I decided to find a couple of pieces that would complement each other. Rummaging through my stash, I found some bright yellow and a more subtle print in tan and blue. Blue and yellow being two of the three primary colors made it a no-brainer that the combination would work.

But thinking through what features I wanted to see in my purse was not as easy as choosing the colors. I knew I wanted it large (because I often stick a craft-in-progress in there to work on during odd minutes). But I didn't want another black hole, even if it was yellow! So to prevent that, I chose to make a bunch of organizers and gadgets to keep things organized. Here's what I ended up with:

I like pleats, so I added them to the outside of the bag, made my straps wide for comfort, and I have enough pockets on the outside to hold my sunglasses, my readers, keys, pencils and pens, lipstick, and some business cards. I'm sure you would use those pockets for whatever you normally want at hand. There are no pockets inside, but with all the organizers you see here, who on earth would need them?

In a later post, I will walk you through making this bag step-by-step, and I can already think of changes I want to make!