Choosing the Right Purse Handles for Your Purse

I love working with purse handles. They can be kind of a shortcut when you are making your own bag, because you don't have to make fabric tubes for your straps or deal with any of that. You can just use the purchase purse handle and they're awesome decorative elements to the purse as well. I like to actually start by choosing a really cool purse handle that I like, and then I design the bag around the shape, the color, the size, that type of thing. So I happen to enjoy them. And they're great for your creative process. A few different kinds of purse handles that are available. These are really neat ones. These are actually wooden and they're just painted and they have a really cool shape to them. And you can attach them any number of ways. You could attach them here, attach them, you know with some D-rings, a plethora of options as far as these go. They also have bamboo handles, which are really nice. They make a great beach bag. Some of them are just rounded and these happen to have a little bar across them which makes it really easy to attach to your bag because you can just add a little casing or some tabs or something like that along this bar part. And then, you know, you could make a small bag. You could make a giant bag with these because they're really sturdy and hold up well. They also make leather purse straps, or pleather, or they even I've even seen them in fabric that are pre-made and they have an attached little O-ring on them here, which you would attach with a little fabric tab or a piece of ribbon into the lining of the purse before you finish it. And these are just really nice because you know, you don't have to buy any yardage, you don't have to deal with attaching these little sturdy little brads or whatever they are, and they make a really nice, professional-looking finished handbag. And speaking of the tabs that you might need to attach your bags, these are actually pre-made tabs, and they just look like little folded pieces of ribbon, but they're the exact length that you need to insert a purse handle with it being as inconspicuously as possible. You could certainly use your own ribbon and you can create some fabric tubes, fold them in half and cut them. But again, if you're buying the purse handle you might want to look for these just to make your life a little bit easier. And they come in a number of different colors. So when you're at the fabric store you can figure out your fabric and then go and buy your coordinating little tabs, so that's kind of fun. Now I have a few purse examples that have different types of purchase handles on them. This is a really cute little clutch, and it's made out of this crushed velvet, which is really pretty, has a little embellishment with these nice buttons on it. And these purse handles, as you can see, have a little slit in them which is perfect for adding your little fabric tube. And you just insert the tabs with the handles on them, of course, in between the lining and the outer of the bag as you're constructing it. So these in some cases might be the first thing you actually attach to the bag even sometimes before pockets, before anything else goes on. But I just love the little shape of this bag. It has a nice little boxing strip kind of thing to give it some shape. And it's just a really cute little clutch. This bag was actually created using a dowel that I purchased at the home improvement store. So I bought the dowel and I cut it in half. And when I made the bag, which is really just a big oval and I cut out a little part for your hand to fit in I just made this a little bit longer so that I could fold it over and create a casing, slipped the dowel inside, and then I sewed up the end so that it doesn't slip out. And that's a really cute bag. You could see, I just sewed both sides. If I turn it inside out, you can see, I just sewed both sides after turning them both right side out, finishing all the edges, sewed them together up to a certain point. You want to leave yourself some room to get in and out of the bag. So I think that's a pretty good, you know, gives you enough room to get in there and see what's going on. And then I added a cute little applique here to the front just to give it a little more, you know, something special. So you can find purse handles in the most obscure places, you never know. Fabric store, home improvement store. These are another type of painted handle, which are really cool. I like these oval ones cause you can really give them a good grip. But this was made out of a canvas fabric which I really like again for a beach bag. And what I did was I created a large casing here and I inserted it, this is one of the cases where I inserted this before the bag was ever even made. I mean, I pinned this to the outside of my rectangle and then I kind of designed the bag around it. So I added some pockets. This is a little cell phone pocket. And then I just added some more and I gave it a gusset here, box the corner so that it had some good shape. And then we have a nice sturdy bag. This bag, it really seems that purse handles lend themselves very well to beach bags because all of these I would take to the beach maybe with exception to the velvet one. But the bamboo bag you can or bamboo handle, you can see how it is just really has a great beachy feel to it. So I made this bag really large so I could fit a big towel in it and all of my beach stuff. And you can see this is another casing where I just built up this side, finish the edges, folded it over and sewed it. Now this one I had to actually hand sew, because it was kind of bulky here and you can see it wants to gather itself. So I hand sewed it first, and then I machine stitched it moving the handle out of the way as I went. So this is another really cute one. And here I just embellished it with a fabric flower. I took a long, long strip of fabric and I kind of cut it with a wavy rotary cutter and gathered the straight end, and rolled it up into a flower. And then I added a cute button and it's just on there with a pin so I can take it off when I'm washing it. So another cute bag, and speaking of interesting places to find purse handles, you never know what's in your closet already. You might have a bag that's really, really beat up but the handles are cool, or the handles are totally fine, well take the handles off if you can, and repurpose them into a new purse project that you're making. So for example, this is a neat book purse kind of project. And these handles were off of an existing handbag. So you take these off, it's really handy if they are actually already have a D-ring or something on them so that you can attach them and still have them look professionally made. So these are kind of a fun style and these were also some salvaged handles from an existing bag. So, really great ways to reuse things in your closet. Find interesting things at the fabric store and the home improvement store, and you're on your way to making a fantastic bag.