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Ladies purse

Following on from the prototype post, the following will give you an idea of the work and hours that have gone in to completing the ladies purse. Hopefully this will also provide an insight in to how the final price is determined.

The initial design of the purse is hand drawn, once I’m happy with this I transfer the information to a pattern which is drawn to scale before cutting out from thick card, this can then be used for any future orders and saves time.

The template is used to cut out rough sizes of leather before using them to cut exactly to size, all complete by hand with a craft or Stanley knife, ensuring the blades are razor sharp is key to an accurate cut, especially on softer leather, making several lighter passes to avoid the leather moving. 

As this purse is fully lined with matching leather and rip stop nylon on the card pockets, skiving the leather to 0.4mm is needed to maintain a thinner end profile. This was complete using both the leather skiving machine and by hand using a skiving knife. Both of which require a good amount of practice and skill to get the desired result (a further blog on the subject will be uploaded at a later date.

Once all the relevant edges of the leather have been skived and thickness checked for accuracy and consistency, assembly can then start to take place.

The card pockets are put together first, each having their rip stop nylon interior glued with none water based contact adhesive, specifically used as from experience and previous testing, it gives a far more robust adhesion and ensures longevity. Before being stitched down the centre, we must first but the central zip pocket together. (Attaching zips will be covered in a separate blog) The zip pocket is done in two stages, the external cover complete initially so we can attached the card pockets, then the interior lining added to hide the stitching and give a more luxurious look and feel.

The exterior of the purse is again fully lined and has to have the press stud closure assembled and fitted. The closure is reinforced as this will take the most amount of wear through opening and closing. It’s fully stitched, then edge painted before adding to the outside cover.

As the cover and the pockets are fully lined, we’ll be attaching finished leather to finished leather, so the precarious task of sanding a 4mm border needs to take place, this gives the blue the necessary area to bond correctly. 

Once everything is glued and given ample time to cure, we can mark the stitching lines with the wing dividers then mark the stitching holes. On the zip pull and closure I’ve used 3mm stitching and the main body, 3,85mm stitching. Thread used is Meisi 0.45mm linen. 

Once stitched together we can then prepare the edges for their finishing with Giardini water based edge paint. As the Perlinger leather used is a softer tempered leather, I initially coat with acrylic Resolene, this firms the leather and allows us to sand easier to provide a better base to start applying the edge coat. Which completing 4 layers and meticulous sanding takes nearly 3 hours. 

The total build time for this purse is around 12 hours.