I used PTI's felt colors in: Aqua Mist, Harvest Gold and Vintage Cream. The ribbon is Berry Sorbet saddle stitch. I backstitched around the edges, used a running stitch for the hops, and whipstitched the bunny's tail (and thanks to PTI, a couple of weeks ago I wouldn't have even known the terms for any of those stitches!)
To create the hopping stitches, I taped a cut out stencil of the PTI Birthday Style confetti dies to the coin purse and used the negative as a stitching guide. (And then I'm using the positive cut outs of the confetti lines for another purse.) This technique could probably work with a lot of other dies too.
The zipper is a 4 inch Mango Smoothie zipper from the Etsy shop that Erin Lincoln (who designed the dies) recommended here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/zipit. It is so fun to stitch in zippers of all different colors!
I also used Erin's tip to add fabric tape to the inside of the purse to hide the zipper stitches. It's a cute addition, and you just have to be careful to apply the tape so it doesn't buckle.
Here are some zipper matches I've found so far with the Zipit zippers and PTI felt:
Mango Smoothie (lighter but coordinates) = PTI Harvest Gold
Copen Blue = PTI Blueberry Sky
Beige = PTI Classic Kraft
Mauve = PTI Autumn Rose
Ocean Blue (lighter but coordinates) = PTI Hawaiian Shores
Red = PTI Pure Poppy
Peach = Melon Berry
At least for me, there has been a learning curve for these purses and I thought I'd share a few tips for stitching the coin purses that seemed to work. Fortunately, it does seem to get easier as you do more purses.
Zipper tips:
1. To backstitch around the 4" zipper uses about 4 feet of floss.
2. It's easier to use a thin strip of sewing tape to attach the zipper then pins. It keeps the zipper in place and aligned and is much more pleasant to stitch. Just avoid putting tape under the actual stitching holes.
3. Align the zipper cut out and begin your stitching at the very start of the zipper (where the zipper head is located when the zipper is zipped), to ensure that it lines up properly. Otherwise you will have an open hole in your purse (learned this the hard way!)
4. Stitch vertically, not horizontally. You have more control if the stitch is facing towards you.
5. Stitch and pull slowly and gently, not only to avoid tearing but so that you have more control over how the stitch looks.
6. Sew the zipper zipped open for a 4" coin purse or closed for a 6" coin purse, to ensure the zipper lies flat properly (this worked for me anyway, is there a correct method for whether a zipper is open or closed?)
And if you are a sewer or have other tips please list them in the comments! :)
To make things a little easier, I also made a swatch ring by cutting a 1 inch swatch of each PTI felt color and diecutting a stitch line to use as reference when making new felt/floss projects.
I took the felts swatches to the craft store and found some good DMC floss matches for the PTI felt colors. Some of the felt colors vary from their cardstock matches, so it was helpful to find new matches with the felt. I will list the felt color matches and show pics of the floss and felt matches in my next post!
Thanks for stopping by today and hope your day is sunny! :)
