Good Afternoon Gossamer Gals & Gents!

This month’s Up-Cycle features a Vintage 1980’s Laurence Kazar beaded holiday, or formal occasion blouse.  This blouse was a Puff short sleeve, Crew neck blouse with all over leaf and wave pattern in multiple colours.  The hems finished with a funky zig-zag. This piece zipped up the entire back.

We decided to Up-Cycle this blouse because there was significant bead loss on one of the back panels, but much of the blouse was still in Excellent condition.   All seams were ripped, leaving us with 4 useable panels: two sleeves, the front bodice, and one half of the back bodice.

The zig-zag hems offered a great opportunity for additional interest as we knew we wanted to make a small handbag, but with lots of punch!

Due to the nature of beaded fabric, it was imperative we cut the fabric as little as possible, if at all.  So the question became: which pieces did we have in front of us that could be doubled and manipulated in such a way to create a pouch for our bag.

All of them did!  For this little purse we decided upon the sleeve.

Open at the seam, the sleeve and lining was a bell shape.  We brought both ends of the sleeve and lining back in – essentially re-making the sleeve – and sewed those together, inside out.  Then, right side out, sewed along the bottom zig-zag hem which created our pouch, and along the top to secure the rest of the lining.  The top portion of the sleeve now flops over this bottom pouch, where we sewed on a simple snap closure.

We added satin ribbon all along the inside edges, and across the back fold, for structure and neatness.  Next, we added a black beaded fringe along the flap, and found a pre-made bag wire for our handle, then added our signature number tags.  Finally, we sewed in the new owner’s initials