Saving the World, One Zipper at a Time

I need a new purse.  I was thinking for a while what kind of purse I wanted to make and finally made up my mind.  I went to my LQS (local quilt shop) and bought some beautiful fabric, then headed over to JoAnn's for the hardware I needed.  This morning I started cutting everything out and realized... no zippers.  I forgot. Rats.

I've been thinking a little about being more resourceful after talking with Elisa at our Guild meeting last night.  While I won't pretend to be good at recycling and I'm not very thrifty either, I decided to take a baby step in the right direction.

Here's one of my old bags: handles sadly fraying, zippers still in good condition.

 So I unpicked those babies.  It took an hour.  Was it worth it?  I don't know, but I do get some satisfaction from saving a trip back to the store and a few dollars on zippers.  I was thinking about buying orange zippers for an unexpected splash of color, but white is fine.  I'm being resourceful, right?

Here's a sneak peek at my bag, with interfacing all fused and ready to start sewing.

It looks like it is going to go together quickly.  That's especially good because I've got other stuff on my to-do-in-the-near-future list.  I'm really excited about it.  This is the first purse I've made with a real pattern--I usually just make up my own.  I always like how they turn out, but this is fun too.  I'll give more details about the pattern and such when I finish this thing.