Installing Magnetic Closures In A Purse

[Bluesman]

I am making a purse for a customer and have a bit of a dilemma In the picture you will see the parts. the purse body which has a stingray inlay, the two side gussets, shoulder straps and strap connectors. The purse is one piece and will fold over itself with the gussets stitched into each side. Here is my issue. i want to install two 3/4" diameter magnetic closures. But I am not sure how to do it without adding more sewing. The problem is that if I attach a leather strip inside with the magnets attached to each side I need to add an additional stitch line both front and back. The lining is already glues in place. i will be stitching the top portion of the purse, but a wider piece to incorporate the magnets will require a bottom stitch line. I feel it will be rather busy and detract from the subtle look of the purse. There are a bunch of creative folks here, let me know what your thoughts are.

Thanks,

Jon

[bizbeblu]

Jon,

I'm not a great expert and in looking at your image I'm not exactly sure where your closure needs to go, but I've dealt with a somewhat similar situation, in building custom smartphone cases. On the inside of the case I embed a rivet back "super" magnet and line the inside of the case with pigskin. I then modify a double prong concho so that it pivots and after removing the second rivet glue the other side of the magnet in its place. I use CA and have had some of the cases in daily use for 4+ years without failure. Finding something to work as the active side of the clasp might be your biggest challenge. Most of my work comes out of the Spanish/geometric tradition so there are a number of decorated conchos that can work. I can provide a couple of quick pix if this might be of use to you.

Robert

[Bluesman]

Thank you for the reply. I have mounted them to a single strip of leather and sewed that to the body of the purse, something I wanted to avoid, but it came out very nice.