Ten More Bags, and a Big Decision

You might remember this post last April, when I did a "show and tell" of the bags I made for Dale of Dale's Floral Designs in the small town of Warsaw, Virginia.  She likes my bags, and so do her customers, so she ordered 10 more bags!  As she did with the previous order, Dale went fabric shopping and sent me a quarter-yard of ten different prints.  I made these bags, using fabrics from my "stash" to augment the fabrics she sent.

From left to right, they are Oriental floral, roses, Gerbera daisies, and cardinals:

Here we have hummingbirds, palm trees, and autumn leaves:

These are red berries, Christmas snowflakes, and leopard print:

Again, I think Dale did a great job of choosing fabrics, and I love all these bags.  (My favorite is the red berries!)


Now for the big decision.  I have been thinking about this for many months, and...

 I've finally decided to close my sewing business! 

What that means for me is that I will no longer spend long hours making large numbers of the same thing.  This will free me to be more creative with my sewing (for myself, family, friends, and swaps), and it will give me time to explore the areas of art that I'm interested in.  For example, I just joined a facebook group called Art Abandonment, with members from all over the world who make pieces of artwork to leave in public places for strangers to find and take and enjoy.  I desperately want to abandon some art, but first I have to make something! 

So, I've told Dale that I will do one more bag order for her before I close; I will close my Etsy store as soon as I get around to it; and I've told Pat at Country Treasures that I will clear out my booth at the end of July.  (I got a phone call from her, asking me to bring in one more batch of my Scrappy Fabric Bracelets.  Apparently there is an older woman who comes in frequently, and she buys these bracelets for gifts...they want to be sure she has all she wants before I close!)

For those of you who are interested in the financial aspect of it...I will say that selling my handmade items has never been very profitable, mainly because I have a hard time charging what my goods are worth.  I have always geared my prices toward what the "average" person could easily spend.  When you add in things like paying for a business license, business property tax, self-employment tax, insurance, and the paperwork hassle of collecting and remitting sales tax, it just isn't worth it any more.  It's time to free myself from this!

I'm looking forward to making new things, and blogging all about them here! 



Seven More Bags

About two months ago I was contacted by Dale at Dale's Floral Designs in Warsaw, Virginia (about two hours away from where I live).  She had bought one of my zippered purses here in Williamsburg a while ago--it's the frog purse I blogged about HERE--and she liked it so much she wanted to sell my bags in her store.  Her little town doesn't offer much in the way of shopping, which is probably why her floral business is doing so well that she is expanding, and she wants to carry gift items, like my bags.

Since I am not actively marketing my bags at the moment, I didn't have anything to offer Dale in the way of a catalog to order from, so she decided to make a trip to a fabric store to look for fabrics that would make good bags.  She knows the themes that would appeal to customers in her area, but she admits she didn't really know what she was doing when she was choosing fabric!  She's more of a flower person!

Dale sent me seven different prints and asked me to make one bag from each.  I used her fabrics for the front and pockets of each bag, and used coordinating fabrics from my stash for the accent stripe on the front, the lining, and the back and bottom.  Here they are:

Hummingbirds, horses, and cabbage roses

Ladybugs, rosebuds, tropical fish, and crabs

I love them all!  Dale, you did a GREAT job choosing these fabrics!

Guess Which Bag

Today I have a fun game for you to play...it's called "Guess Which Bag".  I will show you pictures of three zippered purses I made for a customer to choose from, and you guess which one she picked.

First, some info about the customer.  LeeAnn is a young grandmother who likes teddy bears.  I don't have any new teddy bear fabrics, so she asked me to make something to go with blue jeans.  All three of these bags have denim for the back and bottom; the difference in the subject matter and color palette.

Bag #1--Apples

Bag #2--Seashells

Bag #3--Sunflowers

Okay, now it's time to Guess Which Bag!  (Please hum the Jeopardy countdown music while you decide.)



Did you guess yet?




I personally prefer the sunflowers.




LeeAnn...




 chose...




the...




SEASHELLS!!

If you guessed correctly, good for you!  (I'm all out of prizes after that big Seven Days of Giveaways last month--sorry!)  Thanks for playing!

Introducing...The Morsbag!

I'm excited to tell you about the next swap I will be organizing (with my friend Wendie) on Craftster soon after Christmas--we will be making and swapping morsbags!  They are re-usable fabric shopping bags.  Click on that name to go to the website.  You will see that it is run by a group of people who are very dedicated to ridding the environment of harmful plastic, one morsbag at a time. 

I'm just a person who likes to sew, but if I can sew something that makes the world a better place--wow!  I'm all for that!  I hope you will be able to join us in the swap on Craftster, but if not, go to morsbags and make a few bags--for yourself, your family, or your friends!

There are morsbag instructions on the website, but I thought it would be helpful to any new sewists in our swap if I showed you how I made my morsbag.  Here's what to do:

1.  Go to morsbags and download the instructions.

2.  Choose your fabric.  Since this is for the swap, I am using nice new fabric (morsbags encourages people to make them by upcycling a bedsheet or other old fabric).  The finished size is large (18" x 16 1/2"), so a large-scale print works great.  You will need a 20" x 44" piece of fabric (I always like to have slightly more than I expect to need, in case of shrinkage or a cutting mistake!)

3.  Cut:
--cut two pieces 18" x 20" (the shorter sides are the top and bottom--keep that in mind if your fabric has a directional pattern).
--cut two pieces 4" x 18" for the handles.

(my fabric is a little busy, but this picture shows the four cut pieces, and my printed-out instructions)

4.  Make the handles.  The instructions say "fold a narrow hem on one side, and a wider one on the other, then iron".  I made my narrow hem 1/4", and the wider one 1 3/8".  When you fold the side with the narrow hem over, it will reach the center of the fabric., and your handle will be 1 3/8" wide.

(These two pictures show the handle fabrics ironed and folded.)

5.  Sew the handles.  Start by sewing one seam right down the middle, along the edge of the folded-over fabric; then sew near the edges of the two sides.

6.  Next, fold down a 1/4" hem on the top edge of each piece of the bag fabric, and iron it.  To set the handles in place, I measured 6" from each side and put a pin in the fabric to mark it.  I put one side of each handle against the outside edge of each pin, then pinned the handles in place.

The morsbag instructions don't tell you to sew a seam along the center of the 1/4" hem, but I did, just to hold it all together before moving to the next step.

7.  Fold down a 1" hem along the top edge of each piece of the bag fabric. Pin in place and iron.  Sew a seam along the lower edge of the hem.

8.  Now, fold the handle UP, and "sew a strong box and cross at the area of the handle and hem".  This is an important step to make the handles secure.

(My sewn "box and cross"--I hope you can see it!)

9.  Okay!  Now let's sew this bag together!  This part is easy to do but it might be hard to comprehend, because you will be making a French seam:  pin the two halves of the bag together, WRONG sides together, and sew a SCANT 1/4" seam along the three raw edges.  (I know this looks wrong, but it is right!)  You need to make this seam narrower than the next seam, that's why I said to make it a scant 1/4".

10.  Turn the bag inside-out and iron the edges flat.

Sew a GENEROUS 1/4" seam along the two sides and bottom.  This will encase the raw edges of the fabric between the two seam lines.

11.  Turn the bag right-side-out and iron it flat.

Ta-da!  It's beautiful!  Let's go shopping!

If you want to print out the "morsbags" label and sew it on, go right ahead!  I didn't do it on mine.

Wintery Blue Bags

Now that we are well into December, my crafting has shifted from Christmas-themed to a more general winter theme.  Coincidentally, I had some special orders this week for purses that are blue and winter-themed. 

Lee Ann, a regular customer of mine for many years, LOVES bears and teddy bears, so when she called to ask for something wintery that would go with blue jeans, this is the first fabric I thought of, since it has bears on it.  It has a wonderful back-woods, log-cabin feel to me.

But I wanted to give her more than one choice, so I made this bag too.  The fabric has different stripes of wintery scenes:  snow-covered houses, bare trees, and big silver and white snowflakes.

At the same time I was making these two bags, another regular customer, Debbie, called to ask for snowflake bags for herself and her daughter (Debbie ordered the Christmas bag and school-themed bag I showed you a couple of weeks ago).

I made these two bags for Debbie and her daughter, and then showed all three pictures to Lee Ann.

Much to my surprise, she chose the second bag with the bare winter trees!  It really is a great fabric, with touches of metallic silver sparkling all over it.

Just as I sat down to write this post, Debbie called to say her daughter had just picked up the two snowflake bags (I had left them for her at the local store that carries my crafts) and they both LOVE them!  She said they plan to get bags for every holiday and season!  That means I need to start looking for some great Valentine's Day fabric!!

Show and Tell: New Bags

Most of the time when I am sewing purses to stock my booth at the local store called Country Treasures, I go about choosing fabrics somewhat haphazardly--I have a handful of designs that sell well, but I don't want to limit myself to just those, because then the booth looks boring; so I try to find new fabrics that I think will have broad appeal.  Sometimes they sell immediately (like the single Halloween purse I managed to make this year!) and sometimes they sit, and sit, for months before the right person comes along to claim them.  Sometimes that person is me!

I like it when I get a special order for a purse (even if the order is unusual, like the solid black bag and  solid brown bag I've shown you before) because I know it will will go straight to its new home and will make someone happy.

I know the holidays are approaching, because I recently got an order for this bag:

Red and green and holly--this purse's owner will bring the holiday spirit with her everywhere she goes! 


This customer also ordered a bag as a gift for her daughter, a school teacher.  This is the front:

 and this is the back.  I love the graphics on these bright fabrics.  The cursive writing fabric, near the bottom on the front, and at the top of the back pocket, was an unexpected gift from my awesome friend Susan (aka, The Sloppy Sewer).  It works so perfectly with the theme of this bag.  Thanks, Susan!!

I love the fun print on the home dec fabric I used for the lining.  Yes, that's a pocket on the inside, too.

Debbie, I hope you and your daughter love your new bags!