When life gives you lemons…

Make a 1947 handbag. No, wait that's not right.

This morning I was up early and decided to do some ironing. Bad move. I managed to melt a piece of the fabric in a silver-grey shift dress. I'm especially annoyed as I bought the dress full price, not from a charity shop, and have probably only worn it half a dozen times. I can't send it to a charity shop in that condition.

Then I remembered my oldest Stitchcraft, from January 1947. It's got these two handbag designs in it. I've been planning to make one or the other from tweed, only I don't have any spare tweed kicking around and haven't been in a shop selling any. Although the dress fabric is a little fancier, looking like a slightly slubby silk, I reckon it will be fine for the first bag. At worst making it will be a trial run for when I get my tweed. So, look out at some point (probably next weekend) for the most poorly-made bag you're likely to see in some time!

I haven't seen any handbag designs in any of my later issues of Stitchcraft, so I have been wondering if fabric day bags were a make-do-and-mend thing, and as soon as bought leather handbags were available again women opted for those. Can anyone who knows more about 40s/50s handbags say if that was the case?