Silk Painted Purse

 

  Back in 2016 my mom and I went to the Internaional Quilt Festival in Houston (Houston 2016) where, amonth other things we took a short (half day? two hour?) silk painting class with Ginny Eckley  I hadn't ever really done any silk painting, but it was fun to try something completely new-to-me!  Even though the class was short I made two little ~12x15 silk paintings which I took home and promptly stuck in a drawer.

Fast forward more than 8 years to last week.  I've decided this year to use up some of the doodads and small bits of things I've made over the years.  They're all over my studio, little bits of piecing, little bits of embroidery, little bits of felting, little bits of random experiments, and yes, little bits of silk painting.  They were just the right size to make into a small frame purse.  I didn't want to start some big new project, I just wanted to turn them into something useful.  I had two 8x3" purse frames that had been lying around since 2012 when I bought a three pack.  I made one small frame purse (Previous Frame Purse) and never did anything with the rest of them.

I didn't really have a pattern, and I didn't want to put any pleats in the middle of the panels because I didn't want to obscure the painted fish.  The silk is interfaced with SF101, and then the whole thing has a thicker layer of  foam interfacing which gives it nice body.  The strap is one I kept when a very old store bought purse fell apart.  I didn't have any small D-rings, so the straps attach through a grommet.  It's a little janky, but I was determined that this should be a fully stash-based project.  I think it turned out super cute and it was very satisfying to use up two pretty pieces of painted silk and a purse frame and leftover strap all in one go.  It's one of the simplest purses I've ever made, no pockets or anything, but is plenty big for all the basics and it came together in about an hour and a half!

Three cheers for using things up!