Lace Bag Fix

It’s hard to find a great purse, so when you do and it breaks it’s annoying. The problem is, nothing makes your outfit look cheap faster than an ill-maintained bag. So, when this one broke I knew I wanted to fix it.

Now, I’m not surprised this purse broke. I got it at Penney’s for maybe €14, so I wasn’t shocked about it, but I like the bag size and the crossbody strap length so I really wanted to save it.

The two issues were the hand strap and the deterioration of the bag at the corners.

The game plan was to fix the strap and cover the bottom of the bag.

I decided on a kind of cream lace because I want the bag to have a bit of a boho, summery vibe and I think it’d look nice with the brown. Any trim will work, just make sure you get enough to cover the area you want. My bag had a panel at the bottom so I decided to do two rows to fully cover the panel.

Now, a note on glues. I used the strong stuff for the strap, and while it worked, it does dry white. As for the lace, I used a standard superglue which was a bad idea. It’s not the most flexible glue so my bag turned out a bit stiff. I feel like the lace might pop out all at once, and the edges aren’t my favourite. If I did this again I might try fabri-tac.

If you can get E6000 use that, but for whatever reason, it’s impossible to find in Ireland.

I mean, it’s probably like super toxic so there’s that, but it just works SO well.

The first thing I did was fix the strap. I used a toothpick to very carefully try to get the white not to show then used a clothespin to make sure it stayed in place. If you leave it loose the tab you glued will just pop right off so the security is a must.

After you’re done it’s just a matter of glueing your trim to your bag. I found the corners a bit tough. You need to add a sort of dart to make the trim hug the bag. It takes a minute but it’s quite easy to finagle. I kind of like that the lace is doubled up because it covers those grotty corners extra well.

You can see how the stiffness of the glue made the edges pop a bit.

Aside from the glue issue, I really like how this turned out. I do anticipate that I’ll be doing this again at the end of summer when the lace pops off. I think it’s worth doing again because I love this bag.

I mean, can you really throw away a bag that fits a water bottle AND a cardigan? I’ll hold on to the very last minute.