Girly Girl Stuff

I am not a Girly Girl. While I was a child I wanted to do everything the boys were doing and I was pretty bad at it. I had three broken arm incidents and I have broken all of my toes at various times. I still have a hard time not opening doors for other women or pulling out their chairs for them when they sit down at the dinner table. When every girl in my senior High School class had to take charm lessons I was considered the bad example of how not to walk, talk, carry your books, get into a sports car and ball room dance. However, I do try once in a while to be girly by wearing high heels or a cutsey dress. I was probably having one my girly flashes when I was looking at the Amy Butler 'In Stitches' book the other day while re-shelving it. I came across the large clutch pattern and just had to try it out. Here is what I made:

This is a pretty large clutch at about 18" wide. I used some upholstery scraps for the exterior and some polyester silky fabric for the interior and the flower. The bag has a stiff dividing panel in the middle of the interior to give the bag additional firmness.

I am especially pleased with the flower. The original pattern had you hot gluing the flower to the bag's exterior - yuck! I used nine pound rare earth magnets to attach the flower to the bag. One of the magnets in enclosed in a small patch of fabric that I hand tacked to the flower. The other magnet is just loose inside the bag. I can move the flower to the flap or other parts of the bag. Heck, I can even take it off the bag and wear it as a corsage or ignore it entirely.

Now I need a girly event to use the bag. Some how I don't think dog walking or grocery shopping are just the right events.