Yeah! I finally finished my rubber purse! The design is 100% mine. I had no pattern, but made it all up along the way. I am a Maker and a Bicycle Person. Couple that with busted inner tubes lounging about the place gathering dust, and you have an Idea. I had made a rubber purse before, but it, like my Bjork costume and my first skirt, was consumed in flames when our apartment burned down. That first purse was also an original, handsewn clam-shell design (with a machine-sewn black-and-white houndstooth fabric lining).

I was determined to find a way to sew butyl rubber with a machine because I know how painstaking and time-consuming it is to sew it by hand. For the body, I used part of a motorcycle inner tube, most of a 20-in inner tube from a flooded stingray-type bicycle I found in the trash, and, for the handles, some leaky inner tube scavenged from my Raleigh Retroglide cruiser. The motorcycle inner tube was too thick for my machine to handle no matter what I tried, so I had to hand-sew the motorcycle inner tube (the large bottom piece) to the bicycle inner tube. Rubber is not very forgiving, as you can see from the needle hole scars left in the rubber (second pic). So, I hand-sewed a zigzag stitch in the bottom. I was able to use my Singer to sew the bicycle inner tube pieces. But I learned, through much trial and error and loopy bobbin thread, to use a lubricant for the rubber material to slip under the presser foot. I used my machine lube. I broke three needles until I realized I needed a needle designed to sew through vinyl and leather.

I made the shell of the purse (minus the narrow sides) first, then inserted a lining made from two fat quilting quarters and some interfacing. I made pockets with black piping for my cell phone, keys, and Burt’s Bees chapstick. I tacked down the lining to the shell by running my thread around the thread in the rubber seams, thereby avoiding puncturing the shell and showing thread. For the handles, I took a length of inner tube (always following the “natural” curved form of the inner tube to avoid bunching or puckering) cut it in half, sewed those pieces into tubes, and filled them with polyfill. I sewed the tube ends to each other, resulting in what looks like a very skinny stuffed inner tube. I hand sewed the handles to the body in such a way as to hide the ugly seams I made when sewing the narrow sides on. I topstitched around the zipper opening in a zigzag, and, whew! Finally done!

I learned so much from working with the material that I don’t think any design I would have had beforehand would have been realized without a hitch and a redesign. Now that I know how to work with the material I can design around it; any purse I make in the future will take a lot less time and heartache. And I plan to make more! I plan also to make inner tube wallets and coin purses. I might sell them on Etsy and at local craft markets. What do you think? Would you buy one or know someone who would?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Stitcher. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.