Sewing the Outer Pieces for Handmade Purses

Video Transcript

"Hi, I?m Melina Piroso and welcome to Expert Village. Today I?m going to show you how to make a cute little bag out of regular everyday fabrics. In this next step we're going to sew together our bag. The outside of our bag. So you can see that I left it exactly how it was on the cutting table. I have the right sides pinned together and I have a half an inch seam allowance. And I like to use just a regular old simple stitch. If you have a good machine and you don't really need to do an exaggerated heavy stitch you can just use a simple stitch. Also the fact that we have a lining means that it's ok for not using a big crazy stitch on the outside because we have a lining. So everything that goes in the bag is going to be in the lining. It's going to take some weight off of the outside of the bag and you're going to have fewer holes and less worries. So we're going to go ahead and start sewing. Whenever you sew the very first few stitches, you're going to sew forward and then you're going to press a button right here. It should be a button. Sometimes you twist a knob on the side; it depends on your sewing machine. But usually you'll have a button right here. You're going to press it. You're going to sew backwards a little bit. And that's just going to secure your seam. And make sure to remove your pins as you go. When you get to any corner, you want to go backwards and forwards a little bit because corners take all heat, all the weight. And what you want to do is whenever you are getting to a corner, instead of lifting up and moving everything around, you just want to lift up and twist so that you stay, so that you get a perfect edge. You want to make sure you're on the line and that you get a perfect edge. Ok."