Taleia & Company: Orange Clutch Tutorial

I was excited to find out that the "hot" color this season was - drumroll, please - ORANGE! Which happens to be my favorite color. :) The only reason I really cared was because I knew it would easy to find clothes and accessories in my favorite hue. I especially wanted an oversized orange clutch - something fun and bright, with an interesting texture and silhouette, and something durable (and preferably something I could wipe down, if I happened to spill something on it).

Well, several months into the season and I still couldn't find a clutch that had all three traits. Finding a good hue was especially hard - I wanted a true, bright orange, nothing neon or coral. The only clutched I could find in a good color were wallet sized.

I finally decided that if I was going to get my clutch, I was going to have to make it myself. I googled and narrowed it down to these two tutorials: one for a pleated clutch, and this one for a gathered clutch. I really wanted pleats versus gathers, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the pleated tutorial, so I decided to modify the gathered clutch to make it pleated, instead.

Dangerous, right? :)

This isn't really a tutorial in the strictest sense of the word - I was winging it a lot, and I didn't get pictures every single step - but if you're interested in duplicating or working off of my idea, this might help!

Here are my supplies:

12" of vinyl (more info on this a little further down)
1 12" heavy duty black zipper
12" plum rayon (which I ended up switching for orange cotton)

I picked up the vinyl in the sale section of JoAnns. It had a true orange color, and an interesting basketball-y, nubbly texture. And it was on sale $9.99/yard, down from $19.99/yard, so my material cost about $3. The zipper was $2.99, and the lining ended up being free, so my clutch came in well under $5.

This isn't really related, but instead of having to print out the tutorial, I was able to load it onto my new Asus Transformer and keep referring to it. I was also able to take the pictures you see in this post using its camera. :) I love technology!

Just as a sidenote, Christine posted a disclaimer with this tutorial saying that some people had issues with the instructions, which surprised me, because I found the instructions and accompanying photos very clear - and I'm definitely a bit of a sewing dummy!

The first step was to cut out four rectangles for the top - the original pattern makes a clutch that I'm guesstimating is about 7" long. I wanted an oversized clutch, so I made mine bigger - 12.5" by 3.5".

I unzipped the zipper into two sections, and sandwiched each section between two rectangles, with the "right" side of the zipper facing inward. Then I sewed along the edge.

When I was done sewing, this is what it looked like.

When I had two of them, I zipped the zippers back together...

... and you can see what the top is going to look like (sort of). :)

This part is kind of hard to explain, so I hope the picture works: I opened them back up and sewed across each end. That way, when you "unfold" it, you have a complete top of your handbag.

Voila!

That's actually the tricky part... once you get the top done, the bottom is fairly simple. Well, as simple as sewing ever is lol.

First, for the front: I cut out a rectangle... I forget exactly what size, but I think at least 20" by 10".

I pleated the top - that's my "front" - and ran a line of stitches across the top to hold the pleats in place.

Because I wanted the top to be pleated, but not the bottom, I had to kind of eye the back piece. I ended up laying the pleated sort-of-triangle on top of the vinyl and tracing a back piece.

I also took a moment to round the front and back corners.

I also used the back as a pattern to cut out the lining. I started with this plum rayon and cut two triangles.

When I started working with the rayon, I realized that the material just wouldn't work with my machine, so I decided to switch it out with some orange cotton material we had on hand. I ended up liking this much better.

I sewed around three sides of the "triangle."

Then I sewed my front and back pieces together the same way.

I flipped it right side out, and put my lining inside, raw edges together.

I also took a quick line of stitching around the top to hold the lining in place.

This is the last tricky piece - open the top of your bag a bit and sandwich the bottom of the bag (and the lining) in between the two layers of the top.