Weddingbee Blog

I knew from the moment I started thinking about bridesmaids’ gifts, that I wanted to make something for my friends. Since I had already contributed $100 to each girl towards the purchase of her bridesmaid dress (I had promised myself a dress cost limit, and if it went over I would cover that out of my wedding budget), I had a pretty tight money restriction for gifts, plus I liked the idea of spending time making something for them.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to make until I saw this tutorial on how to make a clutch with a purse frame. Lightbulb! I knew this was perfect, and I immediately went on the hunt to find purse frames. My goal was to make a cute, elegant clutch that would go with lots of colors, and really had nothing to do with our actual wedding colors/scheme (because hard as it is for me to imagine, not everyone loves blue and yellow as much as I do).

I found some great frames on Etsy through the seller 3DPatternPaper: 8 x 3 inch frames in gunmetal!

(photo from seller 3DPatternpaper)

I liked the gunmetal because it was a bit darker than the typical nickel frame, and I knew I wanted something silver (as opposed to the antiqued or bronze frames you can also find) because my plan was to make a pewter grey silk clutch with black lace trim. To make them each individualized, I chose a nice bright color for the liner that suited each girl.

I found the silk fabric at a local fabric shop for a steal, because there was only a yard left so it was over half off! The bright liner colors I bought with 40% off coupons at Jo-Ann’s, where I also bought the black lace and the interfacing fabric to complete the clutches.

(main clutch fabric up top, with the rainbow of lining fabrics)

Once I had the frames, I made a pattern using the tutorial I mentioned above.

(Nice and basic)

Using that pattern, I cut, cut, and cut some more! For each clutch, I had to cut 2 x pewter silk outside, 2 x color for the inside, 2 x fusible fleece interfacing, and 2 x heavy weight sew-in interfacing. Whew. That poor pattern was a wee bit destroyed by the end of all the pinning and cutting (for 6 clutches, that was almost 50 pieces cut out, although to be fair I cut them two at a time, so it was more like 25).

(The pieces cut out for my ’trial run’ clutch… which was for me )

I won’t go through the steps of sewing it together because the tutorial does a wonderful job of that, but the only alteration I made was to attach an 8 inch piece of lace to each outer silk layer, to have the lace included in the seams. After I had turned the purse right side out, I was left with this!

(so close, but not quite done)

All that was left was to glue the clutch into the frame, which was by far the most stressful part of this whole thing. The glue was messy, it was hard to shove the seams in there neatly, and I felt like I was destroying perfectly lovely pieces of material.

(I wore gloves, tried & failed to use masking tape to protect the fabric, and used a safety pin to shove the fabric in the frame, all while trying not to get high off the strong glue)

Luckily the glue comes off the frame really easily once it’s dried — but from the fabric, not so much. Thankfully I never got too much on the fabric itself, and I’m glad I learned this lesson on my trial clutch!

(Done! This one’s mine… muwahaha)

After completing mine, I made a few changes to the design including adding a pocket inside the clutch, and sewing in a tag that said “Handmade by Miss Guinea Pig”! (In case you’re wondering, in the end the cost per clutch was about $11).

The other thing I made for each of the girls was a hanger with her name on it, using this tutorial I had bookmarked long ago on Weddingbee! It turns out the hangers weren’t super useful because half their dresses were strapless and the other half just slid off the slick wood, but at least they have them in their closets now. Lastly, I picked up the super cute initial Anthropologie mugs for each girl with her first initial. Here’s the group of presents assembled right before I took them to the rehearsal dinner.

(Why yes I did photograph this in a rush on the floor of my hotel room as I assembled them. See, this clutch has a yellow lining!)

Finally, the day before the wedding, I realized we were a fair bit under budget (yes, you read that right. Under budget. Crazy, right?) so I decided that I’d use some of the leftover money to thank the people who mean the world to me just a little bit more, and paid for all the girls to have their hair done on the wedding day.

We gave our wedding party their presents at the rehearsal dinner along with some heartfelt speeches, which I’ll tell you all about in my next post on our rehearsal, and the crab feast dinner that followed!

How did you thank your friends for being a part of your wedding day?