Leather and Liberty clutch

I think my latest obsession has arrived! Leather, leather, leather. I have been accumulating and hoarding small pieces of leather over the past few months every time I see it on sale.  But I was too afraid to dive in and make anything with it until just this week.  AND I’M IN LOVE.

I cant tell you exactly what kind of leather this is, since lezbereal, I dug it out of a bargain bin. But it was labeled as EITHER goat or lambskin, so it must be one of the two. I vaguely envisioned making a couple of coin purses when I purchased it, but it seemed too wonderful to cut into tiny pieces when I got it home so I opted for a laptop sleeve in the end.

 

This Liberty of London print was practically MADE  to go with this red leather. When I was looting through my stash for something to line the bag with and came across this scrap, I immediately danced around in excitement.  Basically, I’m in love with this combo.

Unfortunately, despite my haphazard careful sizing of this bag, my laptop did not even come close to fitting through the opening.  I believe the root of the problem is the zipper. It would have been better to make a zipper that goes across the top and down the side a bit.  I saw a tutorial for this (and really the whole thing she’s making here is too cute) on craft passion, but I was afraid to try any around-the-corner zip installation on my first leather project.

Despite being a lost cause as a laptop sleeve, I am quite pleased with it and have been using it as a little clutch instead.  It fits all my essentials and I mean IT’S ADORABLE.  All told, it cost about $16 to make. The leather was $15, and the zip and interfacing make up the other $1.  The lining was just a large leftover scrap from last summer’s Datura, so I’m not counting that. American Apparel is charging $65 for these bitches.  The AA version doesn’t appear to be lined and according to their website, 14 of the colors on offer contain too much lead to be sold in the state of California,  so I think I made out pretty well all told….