Aw, lemons.  There it is with its bright, cheery color and its pleasingly plump appearance.   Lemons are a fruit that are readily available throughout the year, but it just feels natural for it to belong in summer and spring fashion.  I think it's the brightness of the yellow that screams "summer!"

For months, I've been wanting to create a handbag that was unique, but still really functional as a purse.   When I originally designed this handbag, I actually made it into the lemon shape, complete with the bump at the bottom.  In the end, I decided to just do away with this as I didn't want it to be too novelty but instead have the "flavor" of a lemon.  You know it's a lemon because of the color and the leaves.  At the same time, it could be easily adapted into any fruit of your choice.  It could be an orange, lime, grape, apple.  The possibilities are really endless.

I love it when purses include a coin purse.  It just seems like that extra little bonus that can really convince me that I NEED that purse.  You can really create any shape you want, but I decided to use the same pattern I used for the leaves, which just seems convenient for the pattern creator.  By using a light color fabric I now had a lemon seed coin purse.  Novelty?  Yes!  Fun?  Absolutely!

In regards to the handles, it probably would have been a lot easier to go with fabric handles than the premade ones.  These handles made it a little difficult to continue sewing on the purse once they had been sewn in.  At the same time, I really wanted to use these black, shiny handles despite the extra difficulties, because I feel that it adds to the professionalism of the purse and also gives it sort of a retro vibe.  Lemons feel retro in themselves, which is why I was so excited to find find the lemon print that I used for the lining.   The purse handles are just icing on the lemon cake.

I would say this is more of an intermediate project since it is very involved and there are quite a few steps.  You're definitely going to want to feel comfortable on your machine before attempting this one, but even with all the work, the results are delicious.