The rest of the story

I didn't have a restful sleep last night, and I'm paying for it today. I've been in a brain fog all day, that doesn't seem to be diminishing. I'm just - foggy, groggy, and now, bloggy.

But I managed to finish the wee purse. When I got back from my morning work, I took the purse apart and started the construction part again, because I conceived of a better, prettier way to finish it.

This was the second time I was taking the stitches out of this purse. Last night, I originally made it a different shape and size, more like a phone case or eyeglasses case than a purse. It looked like crap. Imagine if you will, a narrow, flat, boring small fabric bag. That's what I had at 11 p.m.

During my Downton Abbey viewing time, I had cut out four square (more or less) side panels and two half-circles for the bottom, planning to make a drawstring reticule (if you read Jane Austen, you'll know what that word means. If you don't - what's wrong with you??). But then I tried the flatter small bag idea, with only two side panels, and using the half-circle pieces as lower halfs of the panels, not a flat bottom. So it looked like a rectangle with one curved end. In other words, CRAP.

Went back to the reticule idea, and got the four side panels sewn into a tube, and the two half-circles sewn into a circle, to sew to one end of the tube. It was a little... on the stubby side, shall we say; a little too short to really hold anything.

So my finishing idea today was to add a green silk band to the top of the tube, and put the drawstring inside that band.

It took most of the afternoon to redo and finish the purse, but it's much better than my original concept. This is how I design in general - ideas come to me in bursts and pops and sudden swoops, and while it's a pain to redo something, the final outcome is almost always worth the hassle.