One Cargo Pocket Skirt, Two Purses

This weekend while yardsaling, I came across a ladies Union Bay Khaki Cargo skirt. The bottom half of the skirt zips off to make it shorter. I was inspired by Betz White's blog entry about the field bags she makes for her sons using outgrown cargo pants. So I set about planning how to convert this convert-able skirt into two purses.

I unzipped the 2 halves and used my old as the hills Singer sewing machine to sew up the bottom of the skirt. However, I had in mind that I wanted to make a flat bottom and didn't know how. One Google search later and I found these directions shared by Sew, Mama, Sew.

I whipped up a few felt flowers from my bag of flower cut outs and hand sewed them across the front of the bag. This turned out to be the most difficult part. The layers of cotton twill were extremely difficult to get the needle threaded with perle cotton through and I had to find a rubber grip thimble to help with the process. Even so, my fingers are hurting. I persisted though, because the purse was looking very vanilla plain without some embellishments. All that is left for this first purse is to add handles made of ribbon.

I sewed up the top of the other half of the skirt. The hem features an elastic bungee-type cord with clips that I thought would make a good top of the purse. I drew in the elastic cord and the two ends will be a great place for attaching the handles. I may not do any additional embellishment on the second purse other than to add some colorful ribbon handles.