Bags to hold kids' treasures

I made each kid a little bag recently.  First, for Peter, I was asked by Corey to make a zipper pouch to hold a bunch of cards with photos of cars on them.

The boys (including GrandDad and Peter's cousin, Quinn) were headed to the Woodward Dream Cruise and Corey had thought Peter might like to be given a mission of finding particular types of cars while wandering around the show.  Since Peter can't quite read yet and might not really know what each type of car was from words only, Corey printed out a bunch of sample photos from the internet.  I didn't really think Peter would participate in this game for long, but I was dead wrong.  He and his cousin found most of  the vehicles in the pictures, and had a great time doing that.  Now I'm really glad I made a cute pouch for it!

The outside is canvas from my inherited stash.  The appliquéd car is out of red duck cloth.  I left it rough around the edges to make it tougher looking.  The interior and strap are, of course, flame fabric!  I didn't use any particular tutorial -- just winged a lined pouch made to the dimensions Corey supplied.

Last week Charlotte had her adorable friend, Silvana, over to play.  I had bought some frame clasps a few months ago and had never used them, so I decided to make Silvana and Charlotte some cute little purses just for fun.  I was dreading the last step -- hand sewing the frame clasp to the sewn body, and it was every bit as annoying as I thought it would be.  The end result was pretty cute though, so I might try it again.

I tried a couple of different nylon threads for sewing the frame to the purse.  The one I used for Silvana's (which I unfortunately failed to photograph) was thicker and much harder to pull through.  Every stitch was a struggle and I used pliers to help me with almost every stitch.  For Charlotte's, I used fishing line from my beading supplies.  It was a tad easier.  Next time, I will go ahead and buy the invisible thread that the tutorials suggest.  I refuse to try gluing it, because I have no faith that the glue would hold and I think the stitches holding the purse to the frame are actually kind of cute.

The exterior is some quilting cotton from my stash, and the interior is a home decor weight fabric left over from another bag I made.  The lining is fusible fleece.  For the pattern drafting and machine sewing directions, I consulted a tutorial from Flutter Kat.  She glued her purses to the frames, so I referenced another tutorial from So Sew Easy for guidance on how to hand-sew mine.