I made a purse!
Pattern: Estrella by Oro Rosa Patterns.
This was my first time working with faux leather. Specifically, I used upcycled faux leather (it used to be a chair cushion). And that made it even harder to work with: it had been stretched by usage already. I actually decided against using the most-stretched-out parts after cutting the pattern pieces and seeing how the stretches would look. So the centre panel of either face is made from new material: an embossed faux leather on one side, and a quilting cotton (treated with a water-shedding coating) on the other.
Working with faux leather is difficult! With cloth, the appearance of needle punches can be mitigated. But leather remembers, and those piercings can be very visible. Any mistakes I made and had to redo left permanent punctures in the material, which was a bit intimidating.
It has one (1) interior pocket, which is a bit difficult to photograph, but:
Some of the pattern pieces wouldn't fit on a single piece of reclaimed material, so I did some piecing, like the triangular piece here:
I also chose to use areas of the material where previous needle punctures were visible, and tried to position them where they'd be subtle but noticeable:
Finally for the handle, even though I probably had a piece that was long enough to cut a continuous strap, I wanted the upcycled nature of the bag to be visible, so I pieced the handle as well.
I learned a lot from this project, and am looking forward to making more!