I made this about 6 months ago but I didn't have a camera to take pictures with until this christmas when I got my camera. The hardest part of making the purse was collecting the tabs because there is never any soda in my house. So I drove all of my friends crazy by pestering them for soda can tabs. Please comment!
^the lining
^close up of the outside
To make my purse I made 2 side panels that each have 7 rows of 25 pop-tabs. Then I have a long skinny piece that makes up the other 2 sides and the bottom and that has 2 rows of 65 pop-tabs. Then I have the handle that is 1 row of 41 pop-tabs. So my purse has 521 pop-tabs in it.
My Purse measures about 6 1/2 inches tall: 8 1/2 inchs long: 2 inches wide.
If I were to change anything about how I made my purse I would have made the long piece that made the 2 skinny sides and the bottom also part of the handle so that it would be more sturdy.
Here is the tutorial that I promised. Sorry that there arn't any pictures my camera is being stupid right now. If I can I will try to get some uploaded. This is my first tutorial to write so sorry if it is to long or confusing. Feel free to ask questions if you don't understand something.
TUTORIAL:
You will need-Ton's of poptabs
-yarn, string, ribbon, or something that you can used to thread the poptabs together
-a yarn needle makes it a butt load easier to get the yarn through the holes of the pop tabs
-scissors (to cut stuff, duh)
To make my pop-tab purse I basically made short pop-tab belts and then sewed them together to make sheets of pop-tabs which I then attached to each other to make a purse and then I sewed a lining out of some $1 fabric I found at Wal-Mart.
For the belts I’m sure that you could use any of the versions that you can find but this is how I made them:
1. Hold a pop-tab w/ the wrong side facing you and then put a tab w/ the right side facing you on top of that. Then thread the yarn from back to front through the top hole of both tabs.
2. Now scoot the tab on top over to the left so that it is only covering half of the bottom pop-tab. Place another tab (w/ the right side facing you) on top of the right half of the tab that has it’s wrong side facing you. Then bring the yarn diagonally down through the bottom hole of the tab you just picked up. Then bring the yarn up through the bottom hole of the other tab that has its right side facing you. Do not pull the yarn through the tab with its wrong side facing you.
3. Bring the yarn up diagonally and through the top hole of both the tab w/ its wrong side facing you and the tab that you picked up last.
4. Pick up another tab and place it, with its wrong side facing you, under the tab on the right. Then bring the yarn through the top holes of both the tab you just picked up and the tab that is on top of it.
5. Then repeat steps 2-4 until you have the length that you want. On one side of the “belt” it should form little x’s across the whole thing, a little like this: x x x x x x x x
On the other side it should sort of form little dashed lines, a little like this: _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _
To attach the “belts” together I just turned them all over so that the side that I did not want facing out when I was finished was facing me. Then I just whipstiched (I don’t know if this is the right word or not) the layer of tabs closest to me together. Here is a picture to help show you what I mean:
The thick black line is the yarn. It is only going through the tabs that are purple in the picture which would be the ones closest to you.
I can't really help with the lining. All that I did was take all of the pieces when I was done and before I attached them to each other I took them and used them to make my self a pattern to use to sew the lining.
4/14/07- edited to add pictures and tutorial
