Gathered Clutch Swap

It's SWAP time again. No not those fun Swap meets they have in warm climates where people sell all kinds of interesting stuff. I used to love going to those when we were in Florida. This is an organized Craft Swap. This clutch was made for the Gathered Clutch Swap over on Flickr and organized by Penny (Sewtakeahike). The clutch follows a tutorial written by Anna at Noodlehead. You can actually buy her clutch pattern if you like to have your patterns ready-made.

If you're familiar with the tutorial I will say that I did make a couple of adjustments to the original directions. I made my pieces 10" wide instead of 9.5" so that I would have a full 1/2" of seam allowance. For purses I like to have a bit more wiggle room in my seam allowances since there is usually more bulk in the seams than with quilts. I also cut the gathered piece to 16" (not 13" as directed). This gives me a little more fullness and thus more gathers which I like. Finally, beacause I used linen, I interfaced the back of the linen with lightweight fusible interfacing prior to cutting out the pattern pieces. Linen tends to shift when cutting and it has a lot of spring in it. The interfacing helps counter that and makes the linen more amenable to sewing. I love how the linen gave some heft to this clutch. It's nice and stiff and not flimsy - perfect for a little wallet or wristlet.

My partner left it pretty wide open with their requests, so I hope that this is something that they will like. My Swap partner doesn't know yet that this clutch is for them and i'm certainly not going to spill the beans ;) shhhh



I had a blast making it. These paper pieced hexagons are pretty addicting to make and were a great scrap project. I thought they would pair well with the linen and the linen really shows off the gathers on the clutch. I like it so much that I'm going to have to make myself one. This was so fun to make and the clutch itself whips up pretty quickly.

My hexies are about 0.65". Hexagons are measured on one of the six sides. So these are just under 1" in width. Making them 0.65" gave me the layout that resulted. I had to put a few hexies on the back too.
'cuz, ya know....you can never have too many hexies.

I added a inside divider and card pockets.


I added a wrist strap and this piece marks the debut of my own Trillium logo which I had printed on ribbon so I could incorporate it into my purses and sewn items. Ok that's probably not too exciting to you, but I'm pretty tickled by it.

If you are looking for a fun sewing adventure, try a Swap sometime - they are fun to participate in and you tend to meet lots of cool like-minded folks who share your craft enthusiasm.

Don't forget, the giveaway for Fat Quarter Issue 2 is still going on, you can enter here.

Happy Sewing!