My Take on the Gathered Clutch

I think that nearly every sewing blogger I follow has probably made a version of this little bag. Why? Because they are super cute, so easy to make, and everyone can use one. Or twelve. I have used several of Anna's tutorials and they are all very written and easy to follow.

So far I have finished two of these babies. Notice I said finished... I had some issues with the first one I attempted. Totally and completely due to my own sewing inabilities, but the next two went smoothly and turned out great.
Here is my first completed clutch:

 After the fiasco with my first one I decided to use fabrics that I really didn't care about in case I messed it up again. I still am not crazy about the green, but the fabric for the main part of the clutch has really grown on me. Here's the back so you can see it better.

You know how sometimes when you do something the first time, you do a really good job, but when you do it subsequent times it looks awful? Well such is the case with the zipper-tab-cover-things. I am really happy with how they came out on this bag, but the next one doesn't look good at all.

Not perfect, but I think they're great. I actually use this bag as my wallet in my diaper bag, so it has gotten a lot of abuse the last few months and held up well.  On the next clutch I decided to make it just a bit bigger and I used fusible fleece as the interfacing. I'm not sure what my logic was on that move, but it didn't turn out too bad. In fact, I used it to hold my make-up recently when we went on a trip to Cincinnati over the Fourth of July. Apparently I haven't worn make-up since that trip because I had to get it out of my suitcase to take these pictures.

I'm not sure why I made it into a wristlet, because it is too big to really use it that way. I think I just wanted to use the hardware.

And here we have the example of a poorly-made zipper cover, yet I had no desire to rip it apart and try again. Lazy much?

While I was cleaning out my wallet to take these pictures I remembered my fun checkbook cover I made using Crazymomquilt's tutorial.

So simple you really shouldn't need the tutorial, but I love seeing the fun fabric when it's time to pay the bills.