Tie me up

Yesterday, I’m at Walmart, and I totally see someone I recognize from Blog World. It’s Megan from Brassy Apple, and she is just so nice! She took a picture of us & posted it on her Facebook page. She always has such cute refashion ideas. When I first found her site, I easily spent an hour pinning great ideas. Plus, she has her own TV series on My Craft Channel. She’s great, so you should go over and meet her too!

I just saw the cutest flowers for sale over at Plaid Barn. Aluminum flowers! I'm buying a few sets!

On to the project...Long story short, I have a lot of ties. A plethora. An overabundance. What to do with all those ties? I scoured the Internet and Pinterest, and these 3 pictures inspired me.

This is a clutch you can buy here for $68.

This link was just for the little hearts, not for the cute bag. Sad.

This link was for a cell phone holder from ties.
All of the inspiration was very cute, so I combined them all to get this.

See the black and pink tie in the middle/side? That was the main inspiration to the colors I used. I pretty much fell in love with that tie when I looked through the box of ties I have. Seriously. Over a hundred ties, easily. So I sorted through and grabbed ones that had any sort of pink on them, gray, and some black to fill in the extra space. First thing I did was lay out my ties in different ways to see what layout I liked, and the order of the ties. Then, I decided to go with the skinny end of the tie because I liked how it lay the best. I cut all the ties to be 17 1/2”long from the point to the end. Why not 18”? Well, I don’t know. Oh, the inspiration tie was skinny on both ends, so I used the skinny end as the edge, and the wider end as the middle. Make sense? Anyway, after I cut them all down, I had to decide how I wanted to sew them together. You can either layer them, and just sew right over the tie, or you can unpick them all, sew them together at the sides, and then sew them back together. The first inspiration piece layered them, so you can see the stitch lines. I decided to make it harder and do the unpick method. So unpick them all I did.

Funny thing about this tie. I thought it was such a pretty pattern, kind of a damask, but I looked closer and realized it’s skulls. But you can’t really tell on the finished product unless you know what/where to look. Then I sewed them all together. Obviously not perfect. But, after I steam ironed them, you couldn’t tell. So I sewed them all together as I was going, in the order I chose, sewing on the fold as best as I could. Then, I sewed them back together on the inside, except for the  outside edges.

At this point, I just have a rectangle with one end of jagged ties. I pressed the other end 1/2” and sewed it down so I had a finished end. I didn’t get a picture but you can see the finished edge in this picture:

At this point in time, I decided to add some pockets on the inside. I cut off the wide end of one of the ties and used it for a cell phone holder on one side, like the last inspiration picture.

And stitched that in by hand.

(warning, dark picture) Then, I took 2 bottoms of other ties and made hearts the way the 2nd picture showed me how. I sewed them onto white fabric, so I didn’t use fusible interfacing like she did. That way, anything I put in wouldn’t get lost in the different parts of the ties.

Then I trimmed off the white fabric and hand stitched those on the other side of the clutch. By the way, I hadn’t yet sewn up the sides, but I had figured out how tall I wanted to, and it was 5 1/4”, so I made sure my pockets were in the right area with some pins to mark the bottom. I was making this up as I went so no picture

Now, it’s time to sew up the 2 outside edges. I pinned them right sides together, clutch inside out, and sewed up on the fold line. Then, I sewed the inside seam shut by hand.

As a final touch, I had a bit of the favorite inspiration tie left, so I made a handle for the side 11” long, folded over and sewn in with machine. I just went over the line I made when I finished the end.

And lastly, I hand sewn some snaps on, 1 in the middle, and 2 on the edge, and it was finished!

I used it at church this week, and people were doing double takes, and then asking if it was ties. So fun! It fits in my new pink purse perfectly, but it works great by itself too! Last word of warning….Don’t go raiding your boy-toys closet until he gives the okay. I don’t want to get in trouble!!
Linking up to:
Skip to My Lou
SNAP! Creativity
36th Avenue
Tatertots and Jello
I Heart Naptime 
East Coast Creative