The Purse Excavation Adventure

This was totally a fluke so I had to take a picture. I was in the middle of sewing and got distracted and when I looked back this was what I saw.

As I mentioned in my last post, part of my Lenten promise for this year is to spend more time doing things that inspire me and make me feel more like myself (Adventures) and less time sitting on my butt watching TV. In that spirit I've started doing a weekly craft project. The project I decided on for this week was to create a purse organizer. I think most people have seen these products on infomercials and I'm sure you can buy them online, but it seemed to me like it wouldn't be that hard to make and if I made one myself then I could make it any way I wanted.
Now, the title for this week's post may seem a little strange and far fetched for something like making a little pouch with pockets for organizing a purse, but it made sense to me...I'll explain.
I chose this title for two reasons:
(1) In order to make room in my purse for a purse organizer I first had to clean my purse. I had to do quite a bit of excavating since I have been too lazy to take the time to clean out my purse for the past month or so, and the results were a little surprising. I found some artifacts in there that I haven't seen in a long time! The picture below is of all the stuff I pulled out of my purse after I cleaned in out and organized it.

The results of the methodical archaeological dig I conducted in my purse

 I found:
- 23 receipts
- A schedule for a local dance studio I considered taking a class at one time
- Some scratch paper from the last time I went to the library
- 3 headbands
- 3 bobby pins
- a hat
- two pairs of gloves
- an umbrella
- a notebook
- a pen and a sweet blue highlighter that has a built in post-it flag dispenser (thank you Boy)
- my car keys
- sunglasses (in a case because my last pair didn't survive in the battle royal that apparently goes on in the bottom of my purse)
- shoes (for days when I wear my rain boots to walk from the parking lot to the building at work)
- a makeup bag full of girly stuff
- hand lotion
- my wallet
- face powder
- 3 different lip glosses (apparently I like things in threes)
- gum
- a plastic bag
- cell phone screen cleaner (again, thank you! my phone has never been so clean!)
- cell phone easel (coolest thing ever! Thanks again! I'm a little spoiled. This thing props up your phone so that you can be lazy like me and look up exercise videos on YouTube to watch on your phone instead of starting up your computer)
- my lunchbox (because carrying that as a separate bag just makes no sense...)
- and some adorable hand warmers that my older sister made for me

(2) As you can see from the insane list of items above, I like to have everything with me at all times that I could ever need...as a matter of fact, I'm already looking at the list above and thinking of a few things that might be helpful to have in my purse...what if I need a sewing kit for example...Which brings me to my second reason for the title I chose for this post...I've been reading (OK I lied...I've been downloading them from Audible.com and listening to them during my morning commute) a lot of books lately from one of my favorite book series...the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters. The series is about a woman archaeologist and her husband around the turn of the century (last century...weird) and she is known for always being prepared. When she goes on her archaeological digs she always wears a tool belt that she designed herself and keeps just about everything in it from her parasol, to candles, matches, pencil and paper. You name it, she has it. A woman after my own heart. And in a weird way...when I was designing this organizer to help me keep track of all of the crazy things I feel like I need to have in my purse, I felt a little like my favorite fictional archaeologist and I know she would have been proud (if she wasn't fictional) of my resourcefulness and preparedness...
Now on to the post!

The Purse Organizer

Materials:
- cloth of your choice (I used cotton cloth with a checker pattern which actually turned out to be really helpful for measuring. Things like "OK I'll cut on the third blue stripe from the end")
- scissors for cutting cloth (which my grandmother and mother taught be should always be kept separate from scissors for cutting paper because cutting paper dulls the scissors!)
- scissors for cutting paper
- a cereal box (preferably empty unless you need a snack while you work)
- needle and thread (and a sewing machine really comes in handy, but theoretically you could do this by hand)
Extras if you want to get fancy:
- a key ring
- ribbon
- snaps (Velcro would also work but I didn't like the idea that if I put a scarf in there it might get snagged)

Step 1: Cut your box. You're going to want to decide which way your box should go. I wanted mine to be landscape but you could orient it portrait style for a deeper purse or a backpack. Then I cut my box open so that it could lay flat. As you can see in the picture below I cut the box so that there were three sides and a bottom. I then took the larger piece of cardboard and cut a fourth side to the box. Imagine that its folded up like a box again...you have a box without a top now.

Step 1: Cut the Box

 Step 2: Cut the fabric. So I didn't do this in the most scientific way...basically I just made it up as i was going along. For this step I used my cardboard pieces as templates to cut out my cloth pieces. If I had thought about it a little more I would have cut the fabric so that I only had one large piece... something to think about when you do this yourself. Basically you want to cut out pieces for both sides like your making a weird shaped pillow case.

Step 2: Cut your fabric using the cardboard as a template. 

 

 

Step 3: Iron the fabric. This one's a pretty easy step, but make sure you use correct iron settings for whatever fabric you're using. Ironing the fabric helps a lot in getting it to cooperate when you're pinning and stretching and trying to figure out where to sew.

Step 3: Iron.

 Step 4: Cut out and pin your pockets. This step I don't really have that great of instructions for. I really did just make this step up as a went along. Basically decide what size pockets you want to make and how many. Cut them out of the fabric. Pin them to the outsides of your large fabric pieces and sew them on. I made sure that I folded the edges of my pockets under when I pinned them. This leaves a much cleaner edge.

Step 4: Cut out and sew on pockets.

Step 5: Get fancy. Now, there are multiple ways to put this together. You can sew all of the sides of the box together or you can get fancy like I did and sew on ribbon or fabric tabs with snaps on them and have the box snap together and snap apart. Not entirely sure what the advantage of this is, but it seemed like a cool idea at the time. Also, this is the step when i sewed on ribbons so that I can tie things like my umbrella or water bottle to the organizer to keep it from getting lost. I also got creative and added a ribbon tab with a keyring for attaching my keys and a ribbon tab with a snap so that I can secure my many headbands.

Step 5: Get fancy.

Step 6: Turn it inside out. Turn your two large pieces of fabric so that the pockets are on the inside  and put them together (you want the outsides facing in) and sew around three edges. This is the part where you're making the weird shaped pillowcase.

Step 7: Add the cardboard. Once you've sewn it around three edges, turn the pillow case inside out (or in this case outside out). You should end up with your pockets on the outside and looking beautiful. Then you just take the cardboard and stuff it inside the cloth "pillowcase".

Step 7: Add the cardboard. 

Step 8: Sew it all up. Sew up your open side. You'll probably have to do this by hand to avoid damaging your sewing machine needle by accidentally hitting the cardboard. If you're going to sew all of the sides together now is the time. Once again, you'll probably have to do this by hand...And now you have a finished product. Its just a matter of adding finishing touches.

 I know the steps were all really vague, but the whole process was too...really I just made up the whole thing. Don't be scared to get creative. This probably took my about 6 hours to complete so give it time. It was totally worth the effort though!

Sorry for the really really delayed post! This was last Tuesday's craft of the week. I'm still getting used to the idea of blogging and figuring out how to find the time in my schedule.

If you try the craft, let me know how it goes! or let me know if you have any suggestions!