Measuring Up

Occasionally I get inspired by clever projects and attempt to make them myself and today's post is about a cute coin purse I saw at a museum shop. A friend and I were at an art museum and when in the shop she pointed out a tiny coin purse that had measuring tapes woven lattice fashion on one side. She suggested I could even do that myself so I started collecting measuring tapes. I had a few that came with other sewing supplies but quickly found out there were subtle differences in printing and width that kept them for being a cohesive grouping. I finally had four sixty inch tapes and figured I could cut them into six inch segments, use ten strips per purse, for a total of four coin purses. It was harder than it looked with the tapes trying to curl back up and not wanting to stay woven but a light iron and interfacing between sheets of copy paper did the trick:

Measuring tapes woven together

They needed to be anchored in some way and I settled on sewing down one edge on each strip. The pattern was from a posting about making an earbud case. Pretty simple, but with all projects there was a learning curve. I cut out two circles and folded in half for the sides of the zipper:

Top of coin purse with zipper

Next up was cutting the same size circle in the measuring tape fabric with a white fabric liner on top. Stitching around all those layers, being careful to have the zipper open into the purse so the excess can just be snipped off, it was ready for bias tape trim. This was where the problems arose: joining the ends took several tries to get them looking smooth and only number 4 came out really acceptable. Here are the end results:

Coin purse tops

Coin purse with measuring tape : left are tops, on right back side

I used an end from the measuring tape as a hold tab which was also hard to keep from coming out crooked but that's all in the learning process. It was fun to put together the fabric combinations and figuring out what was going to work for bias tape and how to make it look good. I brought the one with the yellow edge to Patty later in the day when we met up for an exchange. I ended up the big winner when she gave me a Singer 15-91, complete with accessories, plus two more buttonhole attachments, when she bought a machine for the cabinet. She kept the cabinet and thought of me for the machine and I'm grateful she did! It was frozen up but she gave it a kerosene bath and it moved right along. Wiring will take a bit of work but that's something I can easily do and she didn't want to fuss with it, especially since she loves the Singer 201's as I do and wasn't interested in a 15-91. My little coin purse was just a token of my appreciation for her effort but I did get some good lessons along the way.

I thought you might like to see what happened to Mary Sue's typewriter she brought at the beginning of the week:

Emma typing while Grant spells out the words for her

We went over to my daughter's house on Friday after Thanksgiving and brought the manual typewriter and my three grandkids could hardly keep their hands off of it. What a big hit! From the eleven year old down to the five year old, each one wanted to try it out and figure out how it worked. So thank you again, Mary Sue, for the old typewriter that has been given new life.

As for those coin purses (or earbud cases, if you like) I decided to make a few more and found out I could get a dozen tape measures in six different colors so it looks like I'll be making a dozen more of those babies. I've already thought of people I just wanted to give them to so they might not end up for sale anywhere but this is the season for giving. What are you giving this year from your creative efforts? I'd love to hear!