Handmade Nation

Last night, for a little inspiration, I attended a panel discussion with the authors/director of the new book and movie, "Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design." Faythe Levine travelled the country and visited 15 cities to document the growing craft scene throughout the country - it turns out that crafty folks are part of a movement!

The movie is premiering in NYC tonight at the Museum of Art and Design. Tickets are sold out for tonight, but available for Saturday and Sunday. Go check it out!

My Attempt at Making a Clutch

I bought a stack of beautiful, color-coordinated fat quarters last year at Purl Patchwork. Every couple weeks I take them out of my closet and stare at them, thinking that I'll come up with some fancy project to make, since I love the fabric so much. I finally got inspired this weekend and I attempted to make my first clutch purse with two of the pieces of fabric.

I searched the internet for a simple tutorial, but couldn't find one that worked. I vaguely based it off of this tutorial on U-Handblog (which is a great site for bag tutorials), but got lost on the directions. So I thought I would try and wing it and write up a tutorial from what I learned. But it didn't quite work out the way I planned! The lining was all out of whack and I wasn't quite sure how to secure the top part of the bag. But I think now I understand what I did wrong and am going to try again next weekend. Stay tuned...