A clock-string purse

I would like to share a little bit of inspiration on re-using or incorporating old handmade items in new projects. I wouldn't really call it upcycling, as many of these things are pretty amazing in and of themselves, but often, they don't quite fit into our aesthetics or ideas of functionality.

Of all the things I have made with my own two hands, this purse is definitely the one that I have used the most. Every time I go out my door, I have to remember my wallet, keys and phone, so I really wanted a purse for all of it that I could just throw into my bag. I wasn't having any luck finding one to my taste in the shops, and started thinking about making something myself.

Then one day, my grandmother asked if I could find use for some unfinished embroidery pieces she had lying in a closet. They had been made by my great-grandmother, so she didn't have the heart to throw them out, but they were really just collecting dust. My favorite piece was a clock-string, as we call them, like this one that my grandparents have had hanging in the hallway for as long as I can remember, and which was also made by my great-grandmother. She embroidered it using woollen thread on a coarse kind of aida canvas and had it mounted professionally, but she never got around to doing the finishes on this one. My grandmother thinks it may actually have been the last project she worked on before she died.

Luckily, my grandmother had some bright green fabric with white polkadots in her stash, plus an olive green zipper in just the right length, so I set to work immediately, making a simple rectangular purse with a polkadot lining. I only used half the length of the clock-string, but I think I'll just save the rest, in case anything ever happens to my great-granny purse. I love the coral-colored flower motif with the mint-green details in the corners and the special texture this kind of embroidery creates. In fact, I'm becoming more and more interested in texture as well as color.

My great-grandmother was a pretty cool woman, so I'm proud to carry her handiwork around with me everywhere. She had a tough life as a fisherman's wife, but had a great sense of humor, something which she passed on to her three children, of whom my grandfather was the second, and the only boy. She was a small woman, and she is smiling in all of the old pictures of her, unlike many other people at that time. When I was a child, I used to tell people that I was named after my grandfather's little fishing boat, but really, we were both named after his sweet mother Marie.