Yesterday Alan and I spent a wonderful afternoon and evening enjoying a Christmas get together with friends.  I wanted to make our hostess a little felt gift and decided on a clutch with raised detail in a beautiful plum and cerise two sided felt. 

Clutch purse with raised detail

I  have to stress that I don’t actually like stitching yet and seriously doubt that I will ever but working using the method Vanda taught the result for me is definitely worth a sore neck and a lot of curses!  Although the end result looks deceptively simple there is a lot of work involved in making a piece even one so small as this clutch.  Aside from the fact that the two sided felt is worked from up to 10 layers of wool a lot of attention needs to be paid when stitching the raised areas, the seams have two different stitches and the bound edges a kind of woven topped blanket style (my words, not Vanda’s!).  For this piece I wanted to experiment with forming the purse from the one piece of felt and not stitching seperate pieces together as I have previously done for my other bags.  The flap is also integrated into the purse and I had wondered if it would be possible to get a good shape where it folds over due to the thickness and rigidity of the felt.  This didn’t prove to be a problem however as once I washed the area where detail was raised (to remove the pencil guidelines) it was not difficult to fold the flap while wet and dry the purse slowly to achieve the top edge.  Anyway, I definitely will make some more styles of this clutch as I feel they have a miriad of uses, camera, phone, money or make up! 

Stitching still not perfect but I can live in hope!