Toni's Purse and Purse Lining

Look out, world-- Erin is starting to sew!  Inspired by my success with lining the shark pouch, I promptly took my hand-me-down sewing machine home, stuck it in the basement, and ignored it for several months.  Yep.  IGNORED IT.  I was so scared!  I thought I would just ruin any project I tried.  Or, worse yet, I'd do just fine and become hopelessly addicted to sewing (like Niki).  I already have one crafting addiction; I don't need two!

But, I had promised my lovely friend, Toni, that I would attempt to line the purse that I crocheted for her this past spring.  The purse was a "UFO" (unfinished object) that Niki handed down to me in February (along with a ton of yarn).  Niki found the free pattern hanging in an aisle of Hobby Lobby a bunch of years ago, started crocheting it, and then abandoned it not long into the project.  It uses pretty, shiny nylon cord/yarn, and as I found out soon after I vowed to finish this UFO, that pretty, shiny nylon cord/yarn is reeeeeeeeally painful to crochet with.  There is no stretch, it's kind of stiff, and in order to get the stitches tight enough so that there aren't huge holes in the work, you have to pull the stitches really hard.  You can't just use a tiny hook to make smaller stitches because cord simply won't crochet as tight as yarn.  Anyway, I powered through the project, gave it to Toni, and happily threw away the cord remnants when I finished the purse.

After Niki taught me how to sew on her old machine, I again made a vow, this time to line Toni's purse.  She gave the purse back and donated a pillowcase to the cause to be used as the lining.  Several months later, I summoned my courage, and voila!  Here is the inexpertly-lined purse:

Toni wanted to wear the strap across her body (kind of like a messenger bag), so that's why the strap seems a wee bit long.

Here's the first lining that I sewed, which turned out too small.  I went rogue and tried to design my own lining, but it ended up a tiny bit too small.  Laid out on top of the purse, it looked like it would fit, but when I went to hand-sew it into the purse, it just didn't work.

So, I used this crocheted purse lining tutorial and the second attempt went way better!  It's hard to take a good picture of the lining of a purse....  The picture may be bad, but the tutorial was perfect and I consider this lining to be a pretty darn good one!

My next sewing post will be to show off the Princess Leia costume I made for my daughter....  Spoler alert: it went shockingly well!!  Oh my.  Niki may have created a sewing monster.