Thrifty Crafting: Faux Alligator Clutch

I just had to share this with all of you! I was at Marshall's last night and saw this vinyl faux alligator skin placemat and thought "That would be perfect for a clutch!". They were super cheap (about $3) and came in red, black and tan. I just cut a piece of Muslin and Pellon SF101 Interfacing the same exact size as the placemat to use for the lining and fused them together (the muslin and interfacing that is). I then installed one of the internal zipper pockets that I love (like in my Braided Belt Messenger Bag Tutorial). I added some heavy weight interfacing to the top of the lining fabric for the magnetic snap. On the placemat I used my rotary cutter and ruler to trim off the edges of the placemat because they were a little thick and I wasn't sure if my machine could handle it. I then placed the placemat and the lining right sides together and sewed along all the edges leaving a 5" hole on one side for turning. Make sure you clip the corners before you turn it inside out because the material is very stiff and will make it hard to push the corners out unless you cut off some of the excess material. 

Once it was turned right side out I topstitched around the entire bag to close the opening and hold the seams down (because like I said the material is very stiff and looks a little wonky unless the seams are stitched down). Once the bag was topstitched I just folded the bottom up about 2/3 of the way and sewed along the sides. Now all I had to do was add the other magnetic snap! It was super easy!

(Incase my explanation was a little confusing, I read this tutorial on the See Kate Sew Blog a while ago and that's kind of what I was basing my design off of).

I'm going to go search all of the stores for cute placemats now!

[+] I forgot to mention, since the vinyl was thick and stiff, make sure you use a leather needle on your machine when sewing through this material. Even the leather needle had trouble going through in a couple of areas, so I think a regular needle would probably break very easily.