I've been wanting to make a metal frame top purse for a while since I love the clean finished look but it always was intimidating to me. My sister was in her good friends wedding this weekend, so I figured helping her make a bag for her friend and having a deadline would force me to finally learn how to do it. I did a trial run with some black satin scraps I had hanging around, and it was much easier than I thought (which is good since I bought my metal purse frame in a lot of 5 from
Upstyle on etsy). I've been making bags with zippers now for a while and this process is much easier and the sewing is much faster.
To make the bag I sort of followed
Dear Stella Design's tutorial with some modifications. I made both of the flowers as pins, so either one (or neither) could be used. The purple was the fabric I used for the lining, and it was also the same color as the fabric of the bridesmaids dresses. I had never made singed flowers before (never really even heard of it until I was looking on pinterest for something to add to the bag) and that ended up being fairly easy too. I made the off white one with a
tutorial from Just Between Friends and the purple one loosely from Think Bowtique's
tutorial.
I luckily had some heavy duty glue on hand from a bead embroidery project I was working on to attach the frame to the fabric. Getting that just right is probably the hardest part of making the bag.
My sister originally wanted the bag to not sit much below the bottom of the frame, but I think if I did that, it wouldn't hold much.
Now that I have a pattern I drafted and know what to do I'm excited about making a bunch for myself!
