Weave A New Fabric For Your Purse Project

by admin — 18 Comments »

Lazies, This is one of my favorite projects! I used a whole bunch of Clover Needlecraft’s fusible bias tape to pin weave ‘fabric’ for the cover of this purse. Look at those colors! All I did was unroll the packaged bias tape, weave, fuse and go. Very Lazy. Claim the FREE printable tutorial below.

This was so easy to create and could be done with tons of variations so let’s get started.

Step 1: Choose a Handbag Design
I chose the Chloe Handbag design as my starting point.  It’s on the small side, compared to many of our designs, it has simple design lines – no complicated pieces to work around or anything like that.  It’s a canvas waiting to be painted.  In this case, the paint was fusible bias tape.

Step 2: Choose a Surface Material
Since I had this beautiful 1/2″ wide fusible bias to work with, my grand plan was to create a fabric from the bias strips. Start by weaving the strips, then fuse them to themselves to make them stick together. Next, fuse the strips to a base fabric and cut out the pattern piece from the final fused ‘fabric’.

I’m sorry to say the wide fusible bias tape is no longer available. The narrower variegated bias is still available, just not the 1/2″ wide stuff. However, this overall approach would be fabulous for weaving ribbon, yarn, decorative threads, shoe laces, etc.

Or, use Clover’s Bias Strip Makers to make your own bias strips and secure them by fusing to a piece of fusible interfacing to secure.

While I chose to abut the strips so you can’t see the background or supporting fabric, you can space your strips to allow the fabric to show through. That would be a really nice surface treatment.

I placed a large applique’ pressing sheet on a gridded pressing board and started pinning the bias tape, fusible side down. I chose a weaving pattern of over three, under two. Nothing scientific, but it felt right for the size of the project and the width of the bias tape. Click to enlarge the image above to see the pin detail at the end of each strip.

When the weaving was complete, I pressed the whole thing with my iron to make sure the strips fused to each other where they overlapped. Since it was layered on top of an applique’ pressing sheet, the weaving pulled away from the sheet intact. The picture above is what the weaving looked like when I flipped it over and placed it on my ironing board.

Step 3: Complete Your Project As Directed
Then I placed a piece of black cotton fabric on top of the weaving and I pressed once again to fuse. From there, I constructed the bag according to the pattern, using the fused weaving as the cover fabric. Below is the next step in the process. The short colorful pieces atop the black toward the sides are the tabs that will be used to attach fashion handles.

Claim the FREE printable tutorial below.

Enjoy!
Joan