This June I’m sharing some of the crafts that we made for my wedding, which was four year ago this month! Last week I showed you the bunting that decorated everything from our reception tent to our ceremony backdrop. Today I’m giving you a glimpse at the clasp purses that I made as gifts for the bridesmaids!

I have to admit, some people stress over planning a wedding, but I had such a great time doing it. I started far in advance, and slowly checked items off my list. I think it helped that I moved to a new town, didn’t have a lot of friends, and Calder was living overseas at the time, so there were absolutely no distractions. While planning the wedding, I incorporated some crafts that I always wanted to make, but never did before. The bunting is one example, and these purses are another.

My intention with this gift was that these purses might come in handy the day of the wedding for storing any odds and ends that the bridesmaids were carrying around. They are small, but still large enough to hold cash and credit cards, a phone, chapstick, and hair ties, or whatever other little bits you might need when going out.

Last week I gave you some insight into how we picked the colors that were used throughout our wedding, but I forgot to mention the bee theme that was also running through our wedding. This wasn’t an intentional theme from the start, but it began slowly with a bee or honey comb here and there, and soon we were having fun adding bee-related items to different aspects of the wedding. For example, there were bees and honeycombs on parts of the invitations, we had beehive drink dispensers, 100% beeswax candles on the tables, etc. It wasn’t enough to be overwhelming, but just enough to add to the farm/natural vibe we had going on, and it tied in with the yellow color of the bridesmaids dresses and my golden sash. 

Customizing the Purses

Looking back on the project, I was so happy that I had the time to do a bit of thinking and scheming before I made these. My original plan was to find a honeycomb print fabric for the outside and something that coordinated for the inside, but after searching and not finding anything, inspiration struck. I decided to use plain, heavy-duty cotton for the outside with customized embroidered designs on each bag.

It’s unlikely that you would want to make this exact bag, but I thought it might be helpful to share my process. I followed this pattern exactly as written, but customized my fabric pieces before sewing them together.

Materials & Tools

• The pattern and hardware for 5 inch clutches from this shop
• Gutermann Glue; I had a hard time finding it in the typical craft shops, but was able to order some from this seller
• Fabric from Joanns

Front Fabric

• I used an exacto knife to cut out hexagons in three different sizes from the card. In the end only the two larger sizes were used for this design.
• With the a disappearing ink fabric pen, I traced one large hexagon and surrounded it by a hive of the medium hexagons, making the hive slightly different on each purse. The pen really is magic ~ staying long enough for you to embroider but then completely disappearing in a couple of days {sometimes sooner if you really agitate the fabric}.
• I used the backstitch to trace the honeycombs.
• I printed out the bridesmaids first initials in a font that I liked. These were used as a guide to free-hand the letters with the magic pen and then I used the stem stitch to embroider them, going back and making two lines of stem stitch where I wanted a thicker line.

Back Fabric

• At first I thought it would look nice if I traced three medium hexagons and filled in one with the golden embroidering floss, but in the end I thought it looked a bit amateurish compared to the front, so I ditched that idea.
• Instead, I used the large hexagon pattern to cut out the shape from the fabric I used for part of the lining. Using a zig-zag stitch on the sewing machine, I attached it to the back of the bag. It might look a bit wonky in that picture due to the folds in the fabric, but in person, it’s awesome. Plus, I liked the connection between the flowers a bee would visit and its comb.

The Lining

• The lining was made up of two fabrics. The top half was the flowered fabric that matched the single honeycomb on the back of the bag. The bottom half was made from the same satin that was used to make my sash.

I’m so happy with how these purses came out. They were a bit time consuming because of all of the hand embroidery, but it was such a fun creative outlet coming up with the custom designs and adding the little touches like the applique honeycomb. I’m looking for a reason to make more, and this time I would make one for myself too!