One of my favourite trips abroad was a long weekend in Istanbul. I went with two friends and we stayed in an apartment in the heart of the old city with a stunning view of the Blue Mosque, where we could hear the evocative should of the call to prayer drifting through the warm air. The city really left an impression on me with its strong influence of both East and West and friendly locals. I long to go back one day.
Needless to say, I loved trawling the bazaars for juicy finds and spent a lot of my time foraging for ikat fabrics, which is the iconic fabric from that area. Ikat fabric is created when the threads are dyed with the design before they are woven which then creates a blurred effect once the fabric is finished.
These fabrics come in many different colours and styles, but I gravitated towards the brightly coloured ones. In each case, the store owner would invite us into his shop and serve us tea whilst we rifled through the endless choice of fabrics. I came home with a rather full case after that trip and am still creating gorgeous clutch bags from the fabrics I bought.
I love the blue and yellow combination of the fabric used in this bag, It's the perfect size for storing makeup in.
Each bag come with a tassel attached to the zipper pull, in a colour that compliments the fabric.
These make great summer clutch bags and are the perfect size for all the essentials.
Up close you can see the blurred effect that is caused by the weaving technique. It must be a pretty painstaking process, making sure that the threads match up in the right place to create the design.
Each bag is fully lined in a complimentary colour. This pink one has a pink cotton lining.
The tassel is detachable and can be easily removed if needed.
