Handmade Artist's Handbag:

Sketch Purse

Artist, wife and mother of two, Linda Celestian started her artistic career in fashion. She worked as a print designer — creating pictures and sketches that would later be used on clothing of all kinds. She later delved into her drawing and painting full time, and now she is again combining her two loves in her work. Her sketch purse is a perfect blending of both her talents.

Linda’s sketch purse begins with her creating a one-of-a-kind charcoal drawing. From this sketch, she creates fabric. She takes a digital photo of the drawing and transfers the digital photo onto her computer. She crops or enlarges the photo as necessary for her purse size. Next she prints the sketch out onto cotton fabric.

Once she has the printed fabric, Linda then colors it with fabric dyes. Then she lays out her purse pattern (that she created) onto fabric and cuts out all the pieces for her purse. She heat-bonds the printed and colored sketch onto the purse front that she just cut out. She then machine sews the purse together, sews in a lining and attaches the strap: then the purse is ready to use!