My daughter turned 6 years old (where did the time go?!), so I decided to make something for her as a birthday present. Now that she is a big girl, I thought that it was a very fitting present to give her a proper handbag. Today she can use it in her games, and in the future it’ll be a nice small handbag with a lot of history.
The bag ended up great, and both my wife and my mum informed me that they’d like to have one as well. (Here my wife is modelling it)The size was perfect for her, and the magnetic closure was easy for her to use. It was well liked by my daughter.
Build Log:
The design is heavily inspired by a Corter Leather’s design, but the template is made out of scratch with my own style. The bag is made out of the same bridle leather that I used for my crossbody bag.I added my logo to it, and darkened the text with some gel antique. The logo is stamped with my large swing press and a brass stamp.I didn’t want to add lining to the bag, so I simply used tokonole cream for the whole inside to make it nice and smooth.The inside of the handles are dyed black to match the sides of the bag.As the closure I added a small piece of leather that will have a magnetic button.To make it look a bit nicer I sewed around it just like the handles will be sewn, and dyed the edges black. For hardware I use brass rivets.I played around with different ways of attaching the shoulder strap, but ended up going with the simplest solution: brass eyelets on opposing corners.A very slim brass carabiner will be hooked into the eyelet. The Silfer Works tag is sewn in place on the front of the bag.Can you guess what my daughter’s favourite colour is?To make it very clear that the bag is special, I 3D printed a stamp that I pressed above the logo.This is the first time I’m making this kind of bag so I’m questimating how the sides should be. (Well, it’s the second bag I’ve ever made)For the sides I will use 3mm thick black leather. For the strap I used 25mm wide webbing with brass hardware and leather details. If you didn’t guess earlier, my daughter’s favourite colour is yellow…I’ve now officially made a switch to water based glue, and it’s fantastic. Gluing the sides didn’t end up being as bad as I had expected, but the next time will be much easier now that I have some experience.Punching the holes for the sides was extremely tricky. I decided to do it from the inside (where it ended up looking great), but I simply couldn’t get the stitches to look good from the outside. I think next time I need to use round holes for this and try to do it before gluing.The sides look great after slicking the edge with tokonole cream.Done. I’m very happy with it, except the alignment of the side stitches from the outside. The bag was perfect size and was well received. The magnetic closure works very well also with little fingers.It’s good that I didn’t add a lining to the bag. With this simpler construction it will be still around when I’m not.
