March 28, 2011

Before & After: Fugly Leather Coat Becomes Slouchy Fringed Purse

So this is one of my favorite things that I've made ever. It all happened in about an hour and a half, with me getting inspired all of a sudden and working furiously until it was finished. Early last week I went to a thrift store and bought a pile of ugly leather jackets, selecting them not for their style but for the materials they were made of -- different colors, textures, etc -- because I want to use them to make jewelry, belts, random crap.

On Friday afternoon, I saw this fringed Free People purse online and got inspired to turn one of the ugly, oversized coats into a fringed purse. I picked the coat with the most supple leather because I knew I wanted the purse to be slouchy, and I thought I could maybe work some of the lacing detail into the purse. The hardest part was feeding all this leather through my sewing machine. The sewing machine needle even broke at one point; I'm pretty sure it's not meant to do what it did. But I think it was worth it!

The fugly coat 
The fugly coat's close-up
The new purse, outside my house
The new purse, inside my house 
The new purse, on my dining room table, just in case you hadn't seen it styled enough ways.