Birds of a Feather... End Up on Purses Together

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So when I started my collection I asked a few of my peers (and my very out-there work study supervisor) how they felt about a purse made of lacquered feathers. It was met first by confusion, then intrigue, then finally after some thought, a hearty "Yes! Do it!" So I embarked on stalking eBay for bird feathers. I decided on macaw parrots as they naturally have the greens and blues so prevalent in my collection. I found a great deal on sets of 50 (thanks to kcvpjulie) and set out to make a feathered bag. I already had hollow clamshell purse frames in my possession and I also needed to make the "shells". My professor suggested using buckram (a glue-covered woven fabric that's used in hat-making  to create the shape of my bag. I found buckram alone to be too flimsy- but backed with oak tag (a heavy paperboard) I found the shape and sturdiness to be quite pleasing. It ended up looking like this:
buckram frame

from the inside
From there I had to practice my "wrapping" technique", which still isn't amazing, but using feathers to cover the fabric helped. But for the prototype bag I wanted it to look fairly nice as I wanted to use it as a functional bag.
Finished product

side view
Alas I struggled with the lining of the bag, the inside is a literal hot mess; in fact i realized this morning its coming apart in places (you have to glue the lining to the frame). I'm hoping the glue I'm about to use for the final works better.
See? ugh. The vent came out nice though.

FINAL BAG TIME!

This is still a work in progress as I'm working on it as I type. All that's left is the lining. I made the bag in between the mini power outages courtesy of that evil storm Sandy. Good thing I brought the materials home too as I was in DC 2 days longer than planned.

I would do a step by step walk through but that would make this post suuuuuper long, so I won't. I did everything I showed above, except I glued  feathers to the fabric before covering the buckram shells and popping them into the frames. Final product:
Voila!
FLASH! AHHHH!

[Lacquered] Feather Clutch
(At one point in testing I actually DID lacquer the feathers, but I didn't like how it made the feathers look, but you get the idea)
I plan to do cost sheets for everything I make in this class so I know how much to charge for if I open an online shop post graduation.


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