About 5 years ago I asked for a purple handbag for my birthday, I got a gorgeous bag from my Mum and used it loads until earlier in the year when it ripped.
Unfortunately I didn't catch the rip in time and it was unfixable but the bag was too nice to just get rid of and there was a lot of leather there to work with, another bag was definitely in order. Realistically a cross body bag is far more practical for my life at the moment so that is what I decided to attempt!
The purple suede had gone a bit brittle so I only used as much as was necessary to keep the pockets. The rest is made up of the back of the bag and I reused the lining.
It was really hard to make the first cut , I had never sewn leather before and knew this could have gone horribly wrong, but it went smoothly, the only pain was inserting the top zip. My machine was not particularly happy with the bits where the tabs for the strap attach - 3 layers of leather and a zip was pushing it a little, so there is a little glue holding some dubious hand stitching in places :)
I have been using the bag for a couple of weeks now and it has held up to life so far, hopefully I can get another good few years with my purple bag and who knows what it will turn into after that!
Linking to some of these link parties!
