Friday, February 16, 2007

Help my Handbag!

My purse (a red canvas tote with pleather handles) is in need of assistance - I love the thing, it's the perfect size to carry everything I need, including my wallet, my quart of water, a notebook for scribbling ideas in as well as a small cosmetics bag (not for holding cosmetics, but to keep a bunch of other stuff like medication, an extra scrunchie (for when I grow my hair out again) and other personal stuff). Anyhow, the poor pleather handles are rapidly degrading - the body of the bag is in fine condition, and other than some cosmetic issues, is essentially as good as new. Any suggestions on what to do to replace the handles? They are attached to little square-shaped brass connectors - my DH was figuring we could just cutting the straps off and replace them with black climbspec webbing - course, it's not going to match (because there are matching pleather bands that wrap down and around the bottom of the bag's body and those are not readily removed and replaced) but the webbing will hold up a heck of a lot better than the pleather handles ever did.

Or am I doomed to have to go hunting for a new bag? Maybe this is a clue that I should hurry up and knit & felt myself a sophie bag - course, with the weight of the stuff I currently schlep about may be way too heavy to stick in a sophie - after all the quart of water alone weighs 2.2 lbs.

3 comments:

J.Reilly said...

Have you ever been to SAS Fabrics by the Pound? It's on Apache between Rural and McClintock I believe. They have all these edgings and strong strappy things like the ones I used as handles on my Brazil Bag. all different colors and styles! The best part is the PRICE! super cheap!
http://cadburyskeeper.blogspot.com/2006/12/mom.html

Anonymous said...

You could make a two tone strap using a heavy weight black fabric of your choice, which matches the bag as closely as possible, and add a stripe in dk grey or another colour down the centre. Then slip stitch (Or glue) a matching stripe on the straps on the bag ( Hope that makes sense?)

Chris Wass said...

It's tough when you are working with an exiisting design element on the bag, with those red pleather strips. What color is the metal on the bag? Maybe you could sew a stripe of metallic over the new black handles to tie it into the feel of the purse? It's really hard to match reds, so I'm not going to suggest that. Also, maybe you could add a black decorative element on the purse so help the handles look less out of place.