Monday, December 26, 2016

Harry Potter Harriet by Swoon - Magical!

When a co-worker commissioned me to create an awesome Harry Potter purse for a Christmas secret Santa gift, I jumped at the chance!  He picked the Harriet Expandable Tote pattern by Swoon, which is one I've had since it was released and never had a chance to use.
The sketch faces turned out to be perfectly scaled for this size bag!
The outside and lining fabric is Springs Creative that I found at Joann's (and bought the entire bolt), and the gussets are custom printed Marauder's Map fabric.  The vinyl is some of the premium stuff from Joann's, actually really soft feeling, but a bit of a pill to work with!  I ruined one strap piece because my needle got caught in the glue and wasn't moving forward, so it seemed to scrape off the color.  It also has an odd smell...It felt more like leather, but it was supposed to be vinyl!
I turned it through the zipper pocket, my favorite way to finish purses now!
 I didn't really want to cover up any of the fabric with my handmade label, so I pulled out my stash of hanging bag bling from Emmaline bags, which goes perfect with this!

The zipper gussets weren't too bad, I screwed up one when I was playing around with it and hadn't caught the end of the zipper in the seam yet.  The pull came RIGHT off the zipper and I couldn't get it back on without messing up the zipper, so I had to rip that one off and try again. 
Closed gusset, shiny zipper with the awesome pull is from SewDaKine.com
This bag looks very stylish, but it is severely lacking in pockets!  There is one zippered pocket inside and that's it!  If I ever make it for myself, I think I'd add slip pockets to the back and inside at the very least!
Inside fabric is Harry, a dragon, and a crest.  I'm running low on it!
The only modification I made to the pattern was to attach the flap up higher since I didn't read the instructions right and trimmed off some of my back edge!
I need to make more bags with this fabric...


Other end
It was a bit tricky doing the bottom pieces, and since I didn't want to risk ruining my vinyl, I put the peltex and shape flex on the lining bottom instead.  I used the flex foam (fusible) for my sides, and in my top flap to give it a little more structure since this vinyl is very soft.  I didn't fuse it in the flap, just trimmed it down to inside the seam allowance and used the magnetic snap piece to hold it in place.
I'm not sure how many of those pins attacked me...I lost count. Only needed one band-aid...
This is a decent sized purse, and would hold quite a bit of stuff!  I don't know if I'd consider it tote bag sized (It would only hold maybe 3 skeins of yarn), but it's not a tiny purse either!  With the gusset opened, it gives it a little more room at the top. 
All of them show up on the back!



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