Ellen March

How to Sew Straps for a Bag or Purse

Ellen March
Duration:   2  mins

Description

Make any purse or bag easy to grab and go by adding stiffness to the straps so they stand up on their own. Ellen March shows you several products that can help you achieve the strap stiffness you want that are also easy to use, either stitched in place or fused right to your fabric.

Even if you opt to use a product that is fused in place, you can still add extra dimension and texture to your project with stitching. The bag straps shown in the video were channel-quilted or top-stitched, but you could also use some of your machine’s decorative stitches and create fun patterns. Use different thread colors and you can change the whole look of your project!

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One Response to “How to Sew Straps for a Bag or Purse”

  1. gladys boston

    That is a remarkable size for a purse! I don't think it would fit in my handbag or my pocket!

Here's a tip about making sturdy purse handles. As you can see, I have a couple of purses here with some handles that are a little bit floppy and these stand up all on their own. And in order to achieve that with whatever purse pattern you're working with, it's a good idea to put some kind of interfacing or interlining into the strap, whether the pattern calls for it or not. And a couple of products that I like, here is some Craft Bond, and this kind of has the texture of paper but it's a little bit thicker and you can sew right through it, of course. And once you insert it into the strap, it's fusible on one side so it's gonna give a little bit of, more body to your purse handle. And that's a really good product to try. And also what I like is double-sided fusible stiff interfacing, which is also called fast2fuse, or some people call it Timtex. And what's great about this is, like I said, it's feasible on both sides, so you can sandwich your strap fabrics together, fuse them, they're not gonna go anywhere through the life of the purse. And this is totally moldable. So you can crinkle it up, put it under the sewing machine however you need to sew it, and then just steam it back into place. So that's really cool. What I've made these out of is various layers of fusible fleece, which is one of my favorite products for bag making. And this has two layers of fusible fleece. This has one layer of fusible fleece. With the two layers, all I did was channel quilt it or top stitch it through both layers because it was very, very thick. And that gives you a handle that's gonna stand up on its own, really good for a storage bag. And this has just one and I just stitched along either side. And you can see how easy it is to apply here. It's fused together, right sides facing, turn it right side out, and then just stitch on either side. And you have a really nice, sturdy purse handle that's not gonna fall over on ya.
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