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I’ve been working on this “art bag” project for a couple of weeks and just as I was about to finish it off yesterday, I thought it might be useful to someone to demonstrate how to attach a magnetic snap closure.

Magnetic snaps are a simple, quick and elegant way to attach a closure to a purse or bag, but they don’t come with instructions. I guess the manufacturers think that we should be smart enough to figure it out for ourselves, however if you’ve never attached one it can be a little confusing first time round about how they attach.

The magnetic snap comes in four pieces.

So this is my bag fully constructed except for the decorative inkjet print piece that I’m going to sew on after I attach the magnetic snap. If you remember this post, this bag is the same pattern slightly modified so instead of handle attachments, I’ve incorporated the handles as part of the bag itself. I think this design looks very elegant.

The first thing to do is to mark on the bag where the snaps are going to be positioned. I’m going to put one on the fold-over strap so using the flat circular snap backing as a template, I’ve marked the position for the first snap with a fabric marking pen.

Then using a craft knife with a sharp blade I’ve cut an incision along the marked lines.

Then I’ve pushed the prongs through the incisions …

and I’ve added some fabric glue to make sure the snap is securely attached.

And finally I’ve added the backing piece and folded the prongs over. Normally you would insert the snap before you line your bag however because of the way this bag is constructed it has rigid sides and it made better sense to attach the snap as a next to last step. Also you would normally iron a small piece of interfacing the the underside of the snap for stability, but because interfacing would detract from the appearance of my bag, I’ve used glue instead to provide added stability. So that’s one side of the snap attached.

The other side of the snap is attached in exactly the same manner. I’ve carefully marked the position on the front of the bag where the snap will close.

Then I’ve made the incisions.

Pushed the prongs through. Then added glue, and positioned the snap backing.

And then folded the prongs over.

The magnetic snap is now finished.

And all that’s left is to add my decorative inkjet print which also hides the back of the snap closure.

If the inkjet print looks familiar, I originally made this necklace using the same image. The necklace was lying on my work table as I was making my bag and I though it would make the perfect embellishment for my bag so I made another one.

The bag is constructed of textured fabric paper and edged with some machine wrapped cording. I like the way it turned out; what do you think?

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