I have a first cousin who is still in high school. Her Junior Prom is coming up in April and I wanted to help her out with the cost a little by making her purse rather than her having to buy one. Now we all know how picky teenagers can be about homemade stuff and especially about using it for prom so I knew this would be a task that I would need to put some thought into. Basically the only thing she told me was that she wanted it to be metallic gold with black accents and no straps, just a small clutch purse. Well I have this pattern that is small and has a zipper on the front that I though would look very neat as a smaller version. Then I had to set out to find material. That was a task and a half. The right kind of metallic gold without being too gaudy or bright. I finally found some but boy was it hard to work with as far as cutting and staying in one place. Then I decided to put batting in the layers and do some free motion stitching into a swirly design. I actually drew it out before doing it. Took me a couple of tries to get the feel for it. I actually had to do alot of pulling out of threads before I got something that looked kind of decent. I even added an extra flap into the design that wasn't in the original pattern to hid the zipper. It turned out like this.
After looking at it for a while I though , you know it looks good but not PROM good. So I ran to Michael's and Hobby Lobby and gathered up some beads and crystals and started to work on it. I added the beads into the swirls with shiny gold, silver and black. Then I added some of those heat iron on crystals for some shine. Then I thought about putting a tassel on the zipper but thought it would be even better to add some strings of beads that she could put around her wrist to carry it so her hands were free for eating or dancing. I hope she likes it.
