How to Pick Fabric for Handmade Purses

Video Transcript

Hi! I'm Melina Piroso and welcome to Expert Village. Today, I'm going to show you how to make a cute a little bag out of regular everyday fabrics. The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to select the fabrics that we're going to use to make our bag. What you want to do for the outside fabric is you want to get a fabric that is not super stretchy. The reason being is that if you get a fabric that's really, really stretchy and you make a purse out of it and you start to put stuff in. As soon as you put in something that's slightly heavy, maybe your phone or anything like that, it's going to start to sag and the bag is going to lose its shape. You can get something that has a little bit of stretch to it, but not too much stretch. This is a beautiful fabric that I actually bought a thrift store. I am the thrift store queen. Thrift stores are the best place to buy fabrics for making things. I have no idea what this was, but it's perfect for making purses. It has a beautiful design. It's not too stretchy, and we're going to decorate our bag when we're done making it. We're going to do a little transfer. It's good that I didn't pick a fabric that wasn't too dark. We got this perfect light color and it's design and we're going to make a beautiful little bag out of it. For the inside lining, because it's always important to do a lining when you do a bag. Even if you make a simple bag, you always want to make sure you have a lining, because again, as you use the bag and you fill it up, things are going to kind of put weight on the bottom of the bag and you're going to have holes poking through. If you put a pen in, that's the worse. The pen will eventually make its way through the seam and then you're going to have a hole in the bottom of your bag. Then one day, you'll lose your wallet and you’ll be upset with me. Just so you know. I'm telling you, you have to have and inner lining. For the inner lining, you want to pick something that is going to be of similar weight. It doesn't have to be exactly the same. It can be a little lighter, but you don't want it to be too stretchy because it's going to be a pain to sew it into the bag once we're done. You don't want to pick anything that's going to stretch too much because as you sew it, it's going to pucker and lose its shape.

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