Hello Kitty Purses and an unexpectedly useful sewing tool

There's quite a bit of sewing to catch up on here, so I will start with these little purses. My daughter invited 5 friends to her birthday party, and I thought it might be a nice idea to sew them little party bags.

Janemeans spotty ribbons on Hello Kitty purses

This thought struck me in the middle of usual party preparations and making the birthday cake - so all in all not a helpful thought!!! My daughter loves animals, so I considered downloading and sewing the little Straight Stitch Society coin purses from Oliver +S.

Janemeans spotty ribbons on Hello Kitty purses

Since I didn't know which animals her friends preferred, I picked the more generic Hello Kitty. Using the Oliver+S pattern for the Hello Kitty shape would have involved a lot of alteration, so I created my own pattern, which is very much still inspired by O+S.

I traced a Hello Kitty shape from a magazine and drew pattern pieces without seam allowances as follows - front piece, back piece (divided in 2 to allow for a zip), ear piece, and a long piece to provide depth to the bag.

The long piece caused the most head scratching, as I wondered how to measure the curve of the head/front part exactly. I thought of using a flexible ruler, and then had a brainwave! A 'few' years ago my husband bought a map reading tool for me (there's no link for this online, but digital versions are available! - we won't dwell on how this shows my age...) which helps calculate distances. I simply rolled the wheel around the front (3 time to be sure I was accurate) and it indicated I needed a piece 40 com long. I drew a piece 40 cm x 3 cm which worked perfectly.

map reading wheel

I lined all the purses so there's no raw seams inside, added a handle, sewed sequins for a nose and buttons for eyes. At my daughters request I didn't include the black whiskers.

The final touch was to add bows. This was the easiest part, as I have a gorgeous selection of spotty grosgrain ribbons from janemeans, and the different colours made each bag unique. The ribbon bows are made from 10cm pieces of 15mm ribbon, folded in a figure of eight shape, with another 5cm piece folded over the centre, then sewn (or glued if preferred) together and sewn to the purse.

Janemeans spotty ribbons on Hello Kitty purses

My daughter claimed the purse with the red bow, but I think all the other colours are equally as pretty. I picked mostly the pink versions of the ribbon for these purses, but there are lots of other colours - grey, turquoise, chocolate, cream, and caramel! that would look as good.