Birthday Present

I saw a link to this Fossil Bag on Facebook, I don't remember where, and decided I had to have it and customize it.  I messaged my Mother who works at Dillard's in FL and asked her if they got it in to let me know how much it was with her discount.  She said my Birthday was coming up so she'll see :)  It arrived on Thursday evening and I went back to the instruction site after some digging around for it.  Since looking at it the first time I had changed computers and not all my book marks came back.  The instructions look easy enough until you look at the bag at the top of the page and then the third picture of the bag with the finished stitching.  The grid is not a grid.  It makes a nice diagonal pattern and I have no idea how they stretched it out to a grid because even with a water bottle and then the contents of my purse in the main bag I couldn't get it to stretch out for perfect X's.  They really do look like crosses.

oh blast it all.  I was trying to add pics from my phone and you can do it with a Google plus account but of course I created this site before my gmail account which is what the Google plus is attached to.

And who's bright idea was it to put the sd card in the back of the phone instead of the side?  Now it's getting a billion things off the sd card again.  Eventually we will have progress and done photos.

 original purse

 matching wallet Mom found :)

 First key I wanted to go along the bottom of the bag but the grid threw me off and it got very truncated. 

 Second key, they suggested putting something in the bag to mimic the weight so I had put a water bottle in like they did but without it , the top part of the key is off like in the next pic.

 Third key not quite far enough down but I thought I was going to make it longer and then decided not too.

 That left a big gap in the middle so I did my initials but my M is always bigger than the C so after a few tries I and pulling out I got the L and C to look right.

  Done!
                                      
and I did the wallet with another key design.  had to fill some of it to make it look right at the top.
The only time you have to go through the lining is the first and last, you can guide your needle under the leather to make the stitches which means you can't run through if you're tying to get the other row :p   I tied knots at the back but I couldn't get all of them to go down to the lining so I pulled them tight and taped the backs.  

I got the patterns from a card book and I used over dyed threads because it's my 30'th B-day and I felt like it.  Hoping the colors don't run off on it but if need be I could take it out or clean up the leather a bit.   I'll find the book later with the stuff getting the pics loaded its now time for me to head to work.