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cc Why carry a handbag like everyone else's when you can be the designer? With a little sewing and embroidery know-how you can stitch, shape and embroider upscale handbags. My guest is embroidery expert and handbag expert specializing in trendy embroidery techniques. Please welcome back Eileen Roche who's the editor of Designs and Machine Embroidery magazine. Thanks for being with us again. It's great to be here, Nancy. You know, the best thing about handbags when you create your own, is no two look alike. During our first episode, we gave designer details at the corner and strap area of the bags. Now, we're turning our focus to putting the bag together and creating the tab options. "Designer Handbags" that's what's coming up next on Sewing with Nancy. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest-airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman

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Baby Lock, a complete line of sewing, quilting and embroidery machines and sergers. Baby Lock, for the love of sewing. Madeira, specializing in embroidery, quilting and special effect threads because creativity is never black and white. Koala Studios fine sewing furniture custom-built in America. Clover makers of sewing, knitting, quilting and embroidery products for over 25 years. Experience the Clover difference. Amazing Designs and Klass needles. During our first program of "Designer Handbags" Eileen and I detailed working with a bag working with the fabric, the stabilizers inside and adding embroidery. This is one of our designs where the embroidery has been added to the corners. It's stitched in the shape and the decorative effect all in one. We have lots of stabilizers in this bag. We also will show you during this program how to do some shaping adding some snaps in very unique positions to change it from a rectangular bag to an angled bag. Eileen, the tab is going to be our feature because the tab can be attached and easily sewn on an embroidery machine. Then we have exact placement for the snaps. That's right. That tab, of course, is a digital file so it's going to be perfectly symmetrical and fit perfectly on the bag, exactly where it needs to land. This is what we finished with on the last show. We had already added our corner accents. Our strap is connected to the bag with a strap connector. These look like appliqus, and they are. They're total appliqus but they were done with a computerized embroidery machine. They were shaped exactly like this for accuracy. No matter what kind of bag you're making whether you're doing embroidery, as we are doing today or you're just doing straight stitching it's important to have the proper stabilizer. You want the bag to stand up and really have some body. This extra firm craft stabilizer does that or interfacing, I guess we could call it. Right, and another option is a foam type of stabilizer or interfacing. It's sold in the upholstery department for relining cars the headliner area of the car. It's kind of odd, but it works great in bags. It does. So, use one of these two options. You're going to create two of these. You need two, one for the front and one for the back. Then it's time to sew it together. The best part of it is, all that's left is three seams and to finish the top of the bag. So here we have a completed front and a completed back, and we've done some stitching. When you sew the bottom seam together you want to match the appliqus you know, pin there first or use binder clips so they're perfectly matched. Then you sew it with a 1/4" seam allowance. I used a template which called for a 1/4" seam allowance. Because of that crisp stabilizer it's tricky to press it. It is. You had a great tip for that, Nancy. You like to use a wooden dowel that you just slide underneath that seam and then take your iron and press it open. By doing this, you're not going to leave any marks on the outside of the bag from the seam allowance. Right, and that hard surface will flatten it out. Right. For the bottom seam only, we do one extra step. I'm just going to set aside my dowel. That's a multiple step zigzag to secure down the stitch. I think you can see that better as we go to the right side of this. You can see that multiple step zigzag. There we go, maybe right in here. You've selected a thread that blends with the fabric. That's perfect. So, it's nice and flat. But yet a bag, no matter what style of bag you're making just a basic, no embroidery you need some additional stabilizer down here. You want to define the bottom and really give it a rectangular base. You use a plastic. It's a sewable plastic, which is quite cool. Right, it's stitchable plastic. You can find this, you know, somewhere in your sewing room or your favorite sewing center. Cut it the width of the base of the bag, tote, or handbag. It's easy to sew through. It's tricky to pin so we've used double sided basting tape. It's cut the width that you see of the cut-out. Just put it down. Then on the other half of this bag I've stitched it all the way, half of it. We've got a funny little thing here. This is a foot. You're going to have four of these. We'll put four feet on the bag. They're put on like a magnetic snap. It has prongs and a backing, really very simple to do. We're going to show this to you how to put these on using a magnetic snap. What a great segue, Eileen, I led into the magnetic snap! This little black circle that you see here was actually the last color of the strap connector. So once that's stitched you know exactly where to place it on the bag front. It coincides with the tab that you'll add later to the other side of the bag. Just as a review that's the position when we're embroidering the last color. It's going to stitch this round circle. Here you can see that as a close-up of the machine doing that particular stitching. We like that because you can then place the back of the snap in this area, and cut it. With a button hole chisel, I guess, isn't that right, Nancy? Exactly. It's nice and sharp. Then you insert those prongs. Sometimes, it might take a little doing. You have to kind of cut it twice. It's so easy to do on camera, right Nancy? It is! It's easier to do on a flat surface. You bring it through. Oh, one more time, here we go. You've got to get the prongs to fit your markings. There we go. If you have a little scrap of the plastic you can put that in, that same backing we used. Put on the backing. One more time, here we go, then flatten it out. That way, the snap is in the right spot and is secure. Now we're ready to do the stitching of the tab. For a chic bag closure consider stitching a designer tab. Created totally in the embroidery hoop the tab has embroidery accents and functional placement lines as part of the embroidery design. Eileen and I will show you up-to-the-minute tips. This technique, sewn totally in the hoop, gives us a tab. This is the kind of tab we're going to work with right now. It's decorative, as well functional. The functional, again, having the placement for the snap exactly stitched as a guideline in the embroidery hoop. We'll have a file for the back of the tab. Eileen is going to show you how to create the front. I have the detail to show you the back. Eileen, there's just one digitizing file for the back. That's right, it includes an outline alignment marks, and the snap placement guide. Here's the outline and the placement marks. Then the snap guide you also stitch this on a stabilizer, the same thing. Then you cut out the stabilizer so you don't have the bulk in the seam allowances. You can trim the fabric 1/4" or so beyond the stabilizer then just fuse the stabilizer in place. You saw that snap placement, that circle that's where you're going to put the snap. You have created the back of it. That's the functional part. Now for the decorative part. I've selected my tab closure design. I'm just going to walk you through the colors so you can see. Color one is a decorative element that's stitched right on the fashion fabric. Then we'll go to color two. That's where those hash marks come into play. They're very important. Then color three will be the actual just a two-ply run meaning it's going to start up here run all the way around the design and return. That's going to sew my lining to my front. Let's go ahead and get started with this design. I'll lower my presser foot and sew. It gives new meaning to the word sewing when you can just push the button, and no hands. That's right, no hands. There are several options. There are pretty ones that have some polka dots to them and really some accents and then some quilting designs on the other tab. You can see this takes a little bit longer to stitch out with the gridded markings the polka dots and the marquee shaping. Then the third option we have is a quilted option. It looks like a double wedding ring quilted style. Again, all the functional part is stitched to the underside of the tab and this has the quilting design. Tone on tone is nice or you can use contrasting thread that coordinates with some of the strap connector designs. This is a bean stitch. Nancy, a bean stitch is a triple stitch. It means that the needle penetrates the fabric at point "A", comes back to "B" and enters again at "A", and then moves forward. It's a very strong stitch, but it also gives a great accent to any kind of plain fabric. As this stitches it's just going to take a couple of minutes to sew to the edge. Then Eileen is going to place right sides together. Rather than taking off the embroidery unit she's going to be able to do that stitching right in the embroidery unit. We are going to let this stitch. When we come back, it will be almost completed. My design is almost complete. I've already stitched color one, the decorative details and color two, which are the alignment marks. There's four that are stitched in the hoop. They're outside of the pretty design which is a good thing, because we use them to line up the lining of the tab with the design that is stitched in the hoop. Nancy, when you stitched this, you did a great job making sure that you didn't trim away those alignment marks from the lining. Sure, leave a generous 1/4" seam allowance. I think so. We're going to go ahead and start this. We'll help it along a little bit and make sure that the foot doesn't catch the top of the tab. Once you start, you're in good shape. So often, we think of embroidery as decorative. Well, this is a functional part because it's doing the sewing. It's sewing the tabs together, which makes it easy. It has back stitches at the top. It does. It's actually going to travel around twice. Nancy, I'm sure you are able to do this but I would not be able to sew a perfect scoop or curve on both sides so this is a way to get a very professional finish with an embroidery design. It's giving it security around the edges. This part of your handbag is going to get a lot of wear. Probably the most wear than any part of the bag except the straps. So then, after it gets to the top you can pop it out and do some trimming. I'll let you do that. This is when you could get rid of those alignment marks. You don't have to worry about them anymore. They've served their purpose. That's right. I'll pull it out of the hoop. We'll trim it. I'll just get this out of harm's way. Sure. It's so easy to trim. It takes a little bit of doing because that fashion interfacing we used is rather stiff and you do have a layer of batting in there. But all in all, with a little bit of patience it trims very easily. Then you press it so it's nice and flat all those curves. I do like to use a point turner to smooth those seams especially along the curves. I'll just start by pulling the right side out. It takes a little time to turn it right side out so let me just show you the right side. You'd do some pressing. It has a different color thread. Then you measure 1/4" above the final stitching. You'll trim off this extra seam allowance at the pink line. We've shown you, as I mentioned, the one design. There are several other designs. We're going to show you how we're going to attach the tab whether it's the marquee design, or the quilting design whatever you may have, to your bags. Your appliqus for the tabs the appliqus for the strap accents and the corners all coordinate, as they have on this bag. That's why we call these "Designer Bags" because they have designs that are exclusive to the fabric and to working with your embroidery machine. To finish your designer handbag don't forget about the lining details. The inside can be as exciting as the outside. Whimsical lining colors and personalizing labels are just a few ways to add the proverbial icing on the cake. I have a really fun, whimsical lining in this bag. Notice it's kind of light colored so you can see the gadgets that are inside? Exactly. It makes it easy to find your belongings. We'll show you other ways of working with the lining but the next step would be to sew the side seams and do the shaping. There's one more designer detail that we'd like to share with you. Perhaps you remember seeing this bag. It's shaped on the side. It was a rectangle to begin with but you can carry it normally or tuck it in and snap it. Then it really becomes a fashion bag, not just a tote bag. Before sewing the side seams, put in an extra two snaps two pairs of snaps. I've put the innies on the right side and the outies on the outside measuring down 1-1/2", and over 2". You can do this using the technique we showed you using the magnetic snap. I just used the disk of a snap to mark the points at which we would do the cutting. Again, down 1-1/2" and over 2". Then you'd use your snap, place it in there as we have shown you, right here, on both sides. You'd have four snaps. Then you're welcome to sew the side seams because when you're finished sewing the side seams it will shape. Speaking of side seams, it's pretty simple to do. It's simple because we have had the shaping created by that embroidery. You'd sew the 1/4" side seam, and then there's a hole. Right, and of course when you sew that side seam again, you have to match your appliqus. I always put a binding clip right there at that match point, and then sew that closed. Then you have this big hole in the bottom of your bag, Nancy! You fold it until those edges the center seam and the side seam align. We've stitched in this area. When we turn this right side out there's a lot of stabilizers in here but let me show you how that shapes. That stabilizer is really very forgiving. You can kind of manhandle it in this fashion and then steam any creases or folds out that you don't want. Notice, here's the embroidery. I've only turned half of the this out. We'll get another bag, but look at what a nice shape that is. Beautiful. Very professional looking, Nancy. Sew that other seam and then cut a lining. Fun lining! I usually cut my lining the same size as my bag but I use 1/2" seam allowance on the side seams so that it's just a little tiny bit smaller than the bag and fits in there nicely. You can add an embroidery, a label, whatever you'd like. Then meet the lining inside the bag, wrong sides together. Here's another progression that we have of the bag where the fun lining is meeting the bag. We used clips, because sometimes those pins you get hurt when you're sewing around! We just finished sewing that tab. Here's another tab we have. I've marked the center of the tab. Place it in the center of the bag. You'd stitch across the end to baste it there. The very final step is to finish the top the binding. This is a very simple quilting technique that we've used and applied. We have contrasting samples. You would have the same binding strip. The binding would be cut 2-1/2" wide. Let me unfold this for you. 2-1/2" wide, folded in half, wrong sides together meeting the long edges. This is a quilting technique so perhaps some of you have done this. One end is cut straight and the other end is cut on a 45-degree angle. Just trim it off with your ruler at 45 degrees. Then place a strip of paperbacked fusible web on the very edge and press it to the inside. Start sewing at this angled edge sewing about four inches from the end. Then you'd sew all the way around. Right. This represents the tail end. Eileen, you want to take off the fusible web? I'll give that to you. That will allow me to tuck the binding end into the binding beginning. Then do the honors and give it a press. This will be the seam for that short little edge. That is a great time-saving technique, Nancy. It is. There's too much tail here so on this sample, you'll see that we've trimmed the tail just trimmed off the excess fabric. Now finish sewing your seam. On this sample, we simply would wrap the binding to the wrong side and edgestitch or stitch in the ditch. You want to show them your bag, Eileen? Sure. Around the edge, the binding was just stitched in the ditch, or the edge. Through working with the magic of sewing techniques and embroidery techniques you have all the basics you need to know to make a "Designer Handbag." The magic combination of sewing and then filling a need has no borders or boundaries. During the Nancy's Corner segment I've interviewed many groups and individuals who share their love of sewing to help others. Halfway around the world in South Africa the skill of sewing shweshwe poppis-- "poppis" is the African term for dolls-- benefits both children and the doll makers. Elizabeth Schell, with Marula Imports is involved with the project and joins us on Skype. Welcome back to Sewing with Nancy, Elizabeth. Hi, Nancy, thanks so much for having me. I'm very excited to tell you and your viewers about some really fun and delightful imaginative fantasy figures called shweshwe poppis. Now, poppis, they're cute little dolls. They're adorable. But why don't you give a little history behind them? Sure, shweshwe is 100% cotton fabric that I import from South Africa. As you mentioned, the word "poppi" is a South African word for "doll." The dolls are based on drawings of children who attend a malnutrition and rehabilitation preschool in a town called Zola, Soweto. The children put crayon to paper and they produce these enchanting drawings. The men and women from the community stitch life into the drawings by creating the dolls in the likeness of the drawings using the shweshwe fabrics.

Nancy

These dolls, the sale of these dolls have a benefit to the people of South Africa. Tell our viewers about that. The shweshwe poppis initiative was born out of the idea to create income-generating opportunities to lessen the community's dependence on food parcels. There's an organization called the African Children Feeding Scheme. They already provide much needed food to 32,000 children around the Johannesburg area. So the sale generated from the shweshwe poppis alleviate some of this need. The income goes directly toward feeding and educating children in the community. Let's let our viewers see some of these great dolls. Here, I have Faith. They're all named, cute little designs. Then we have, in my chair where you normally would sit if you were on our set we have four poppis sitting there just smiling at me. They all are designed from children's drawings using the shweshwe fabric. They're really charming.

Elizabeth

They're all very unique. They're a little quirky. Best of all, they're untainted by adult perspective. Right, they're quirky. And you just want to smile when you look at them. It's amazing to think that the sale of these helps feed lots of people, little children. That's right, yes Nancy.

Nancy

The fabric is shweshwe fabric and it's available in the United States as well as in, of course, South Africa. But the creating of the dolls means a lot to children as well as to the people who sew them. That's correct. Right now, there's a group of 15 women and one man involved in the creation of the dolls. They range in ages from 19 to 69. They're all from the local Soweto community. They were previously unemployed so this shweshwe poppis initiative is offering them so many benefits. Most importantly, it's sustainable employment educational opportunities, and then a real sense of pride and purpose for the people involved in creating the dolls. You know, no matter where people are sewing whether it's in South Africa, the United States Japan, or wherever across the world I think what you are telling us that's exactly what it brings, encouragement. It sustains people. The gift is in the giving. That's what you've been doing through your fabric.

Elizabeth

That's correct. Are there some other interesting thoughts you'd like to share with us about the dolls, the poppis? It's such an interesting term. Yes, well, you know, the shweshwe poppis initiative has done so much for the social upliftment for impoverished communities, but it's done other things. It had other benefits that were really unexpected. It's really helped build the self-confidence and self-esteem of the people involved. They're so excited about what they've accomplished so far. They're really excited about the potential for the future for what they could accomplish. All through sewing and some artwork by children and using your specialty fabric. What a great combination. Elizabeth, thank you for being with us and for sharing this great project and wonderful fabric. Thank you, Nancy. I'm very privileged to have joined you today. For more information on shweshwe poppis

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nancyzieman.com where you'll find everything relating Sewing with Nancy. The current 52 shows are available for you to watch online and all the Nancy's Corner guests are listed so are their topics plus you'll find more sewing and quilting information posted bi-weekly on my blog. A special thanks to Eileen Roche for joining us for "Designer Handbags" our two-part series on creating and stitching handbags with embroidery. Thank you for joining us. Bye for now. Nancy and Eileen have prepared a CD entitled "Designer Handbags" that includes the instructions designer techniques and embroideries for the bags featured in this two-part series. For ordering information, call 1-800-336-8373

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sewingwithnancy.com/2517 Order item number CD00800, "Designer Handbags." Visit Nancy's website at nancyzieman.com to see additional episodes, Nancy's blog, and more. Sewing with Nancy TV's longest airing sewing and quilting program with Nancy Zieman

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Baby Lock, Madeira Threads Koala Studios, Clover Amazing Designs, and Klass Needles. Closed captioning funding provided by Rowenta. Sewing with Nancy &nbspis a co-production of Nancy Zieman Productions and Wisconsin Public Television.