Tempted Threads: Upcycle Purse From Suede Leather Pants

Found a pair of like new St. Johns Bay black suede leather pants at Salvation Army for $14.00. Another purse for Mary.

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Here are some photos of the process:

No pockets or belt loops so I decided to salvage all the leather and design a purse from scratch.

I plan on making a new "waistband" for the purse using this technique from the original pants.

I had some leftover upholstery material from a purse that I had made for my daughter and decided to do a center panel on the front and back with pockets to hold pens, cell phone, flashlight, etc. I interfaced the back of the fabric with Pellon SF101 fusible interfacing. Here I'm adding a gray lining to the pockets. The same material will be used for the purse lining.

I started using these wonder clips for assembly. Its like woodworking. Here the pockets are being arranged for the center panels.

A leather piece is sewn to the bottom of the center panels so that leather runs across the entire bottom of the bag. All leather will be attached with a felled seam.

3/8" Seamstick 129 from Sailright.com will baste the center panels to the outer leather panels.

After stitching the first seam of the felled seam.

The leather seemed a little too "floppy" so I decided to interface it with some extremely ugly upholstery fabric from Habitat using Elmer's spray adhesive (love this stuff).

The leather now has a more structured feel to it. I then used Seamstick 129 basting tape to hold down the felled seam for top stitching. The seam has gotten too thick for my Bernina 1130 so I'll be using the Cowboy CB3200 compound walking foot sewing machine with Dabond V92 TEX90 polyester thread.

Top stitch complete... turned out nice and the Cowboy went through all of those layers like butter.

This is the pocket construction. It will run the full width of the purse and be sewn into the side seams.

The basting tape helped secure the pocket panel in place. No place to use the clips and the material was getting too thick for pins.

Added a sleeve in the bottom of the liner for a plywood stiffener.

Sewed up the side and bottom seams and boxed the bottom of both the outer shell and the liner.

Ended up with a real good fit.

Front view.

From the leg panels, 2 1/2" strips are joined end to end to fashion the straps. Ultimately, they will be 1 1/4" wide with the center panel fabric on the under side.