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DIY This Foldover Leather Clutch to Up Your Spring Style

Roxy Taghavian

Roxy has been creating and executing DIY projects since her very first trip to Michael's as a child. If there's a project at hand, she'll figure out how to make it. When she's not wielding her hot glue gun, she can be found at the beach, traveling to far off lands, reading and running at her gym "The Panhandle."

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Mar 24, 2015

DIY This Foldover Leather Clutch to Up Your Spring Style

As people with many goodies to carry around and an inclination towards organization, we love it when we find a good bag with pockets. With spring rolling in, we’re doing some cleaning and thought we’d empty out our purses. Where to put everything? We thought we’d make a new purse customized to our taste. We’ve concluded that leather + pockets = the perfect spring clutch.

Materials:

– leather or pleather (whatever floats your boat)

– colorful thread

– zippers

Tools:

– ruler/straight edge

– X-Acto knife

– cutting mat

– scissors

– sewing machine

Instructions:

First cut out two sides of your bag with fabric scissors or an X-Acto knife and a straight edge. You get to customize it, so choose the size that’s perfect for you. Some of us love a bag that can hold literally everything in our lives (like an extra pair of shoes, or an entire change of clothes, and a toothbrush), and some of us sit on the mini-backpack side of the fence and need a smaller carry-all.

Cut two identical pieces of leather. Ours is 12 inches by 14 inches.
Slice a small section in the lower half of one piece of leather leaving a space that will fit your zipper.
Attach your zipper with pins and then sew it in place.
Put your pieces of leather together with the correct side facing out. Pin your second zipper to the top edge of each piece of leather and sew.
Stitch around the edges of the leather starting from the end of the zipper and working your way around the bag.
Using your X-Acto knife, cut a triangle in the upper left corner of your bag. Stitch around the edges of the triangle.
Sew a line across the center of your bag, creating two separate compartments.

We’re making two compartments in this purse, so for the first one, we need a zipper on the bottom half of one of the pieces of leather. Using your X-Acto knife and straight edge, cut out a section that fits your zipper. Then pin the zipper in place and stitch around the sides.

For the second section, add a zipper to the top edge of your leather. Pin it to one piece of leather, then place the other piece of leather on the other side of the zipper. Make sure it’s lined up! We chose a zipper that’s shorter than the width of our bag as a part of the design. Feel free to do the same or change it up. Sew the zipper in place.

Sew around the edges of the bag, making sure to watch that your seam is straight. Cut off any excess leather that might be creeping on the edges.

To add the handle, cut out a triangle or any other shape and sew around the edges. Then sew a straight line across the bag to establish two compartments.