I HATE Amy Butler

Maybe that is a bit strong but as I sit here with sore fingers and a weary soul, I realy do hate her. She published a book called 'In Stitches' with a sub tite of '25 simple and stylish sewing projects'. The projects look stylish but, make no mistake about it, the projects are not simple to sew. I started off with the Patchwork Handbag (called the Funeral Purse earlier) which was supposed to be very difficult. As it was the last project in the book and I had no real problems finishing it, I assumed that all the others would be very doable for my sewing skills. I next tried the Clutch handbag (called the Girlie Bag by me earlier) and again had little trouble with it. I was working up to the Fashion Checkbook Clutch. A seemingly wonderful portfolio style case to hold a checkbook, credit cards, pens, lip gloss and miscellaneous papers. Who could resist trying this project after seeing this picture?

There are 81 steps to this project and 25 separate illustrations to aid construction. With all those details, how could I go wrong? Well, I went wrong many times and ended up ripping out the last three layers and joining them by hand. The exterior looks pretty good if you squint a little. The back side has an additional pocket on it but I didn't know it was there until I started construction.

The interior looks pretty good but that odd flower on the credit card pockets is there to cover up the blood I accidentily got on the interior while trying to machine sew it all together. There are some parts that have been sewn at least a dozen times through 12 layers of stuff and still I could not get a great result. Again, squinting helps.

Amy Buter may have designed this project but she has a couple of women who actually wrote the instructions and six testers to work through the patterns. I blame all of them for my less than stellar results only in that after sewing several projects with the same pattern makers intructions the testers couldn't help but get good results. I am also to blame for tackling a project that I was ill prepared to complete. I really think I can get a great result at some point in time, just not this past week or so.

BTW the fabrics I used were all from the Designer Fabrics Outlet in Toronto. I used about a quarter of a yard of drapery fabric for the exterior and about a third of a yard of silk dupioni for the interior. The cording , which I substituted for the pattern's ruffle, was also purchased in Toronto. I used significantly less than the yardages asked for in the pattern .. and I have no idea why. I used a 'by the yard' mid-weight zipper as I could not find a pre-made one, locally or in my stash. I could not find the recommended zipper pull/handle thingy but I am still looking around to find one. I don't think I will actually use this as a clutch but as a correspondence folder. I really need a place to hold my envelopes, note paper, stamps and little address book and this looks like a good solution to that storage problem.