Finally clearing the work bench to work on the girdle purses.
Starting with the simple efficient design that I’ll be referring to as the Square Body design. It’s a simple rectangle that 8.25 inches by 18ish inches. Three sides are straight and one narrow end can be left as the natural edge of the hide.

Since the girdle purse is a turned bag, the fold between the purse body is notched to allow the bag to remain mostly flat when turned right side out. Without the notching the bottom corners would become large lumps that would warp the bottom fold and side seems.

That’s the end of the pre stitching work. Next is folding and stitching. The steps were:

• Fold the body panels outside to outside and stitch the two edges together.
• Fold the belt panels inside to inside and stitch across using the top edge of the body panel as a guide for the stitching line

While there is a sleeve for a belt to pass through at this point it’s not really practical, and this is one aspect where the panel pattern produces a little bit of waste in excess for speed and ease of production. Just cutting out a simple rectable from the cent to leave a loop on either side would do the job of making it easy to thread a belt through the purse. But there were tools in use at the time to make a decorative cut out quick, easy, and reproducable. Leather gaskets and washer were a thing, and they would have been cut out with a circular cutter, or an arced blade. For this purse I punched out 3 circles, and then used the same punch to trim back the points as well.

More complex girdle purses would attach individual belt loops, or would a belt loop to join up to 4 pouches together into a purse.

Now the purse is wetted. As in soaked through with cold water, drained. Then the body panels are ‘turned’ right side out and the side seems pushed out as far as possible and pressed flat. To keep the purse flap closed, I chose to use a leather lace of the same material, so I also punched 2 small holes in the back body panel just below the flap’s stich line.

Now that I have a dimensions, a pattern, and an assembly processs I can consistently reproduce this square body girdle purse. And I did. Because vegetable tanned and goat skins leather are stetchy and expected to deform and mold through use, I made a second square body purse using a dimensionably stable modern leather in the form of some repurposed motorcycle riding pants. I didn’t have a singe piece that would fit the purse panel, so I did a quick french seam to join 2 strips together to form the panel. This will become the contol square body girdle purse.

Observations at this stage are lending support to by theory that the kidney shape does not apply to the the pattern of these prominent bags. The construction being a turned bag, what is producing the elegantly curved sides of the purse body. This accentuated by full width belt loops and purse flap that are held flat by the stitched seam above the purse body. With a seam allowance of 1/8 inch that forces the purse body to be at least a 1/4″ narrower than the cover flap.
Because the purse is turned, the seam allowances result in excess leather being preset in the bottom corners. Even with rounded these corners and minimizing the size of the seem allowance, these types of turned corners try to extend out trying to reverse the arc. This accentuates the perception of bulging corners.
The combination of narrowing width and the perception of bulging starts to develop the classic kidney bean silhouette.

I expect to find this silhouette becomes even more pronounce when the purse are filled with the weight of contents and held closed with laced toggle wrapped around the purse.

The first 2 Square Body Girdle Purses finished and ready for stuffing.