It’s In The Bag

While my daughter and her husband were in the hospital laboring to birth their beautiful son, my assignment was to be at their house to take care of their three animals. I was happy to do so.

I was a bit challenged in my thinking about this. As an admitted obsessive-compulsive person with the busiest show season rapidly approaching, I knew it’d make me crazy if I didn’t have something productive to do while I was house-and-animal sitting. I warped up my rigid heddle loom with some mohair to recreate that gorgeous purple & silver scarf. Then I thought about it and decided that I would bring that to my next show instead, weaving with it while I was there. Instead, I brought lots of fabric to sew my scarf bags. Every handwoven piece I sell comes in a hand sewn bag. My bags are all made of repurposed fabric – pillowcases work beautifully. It’s part of my philosophy, and my business name – giving things their second wind.

I arrived in Rochester on Thursday morning, and by the time that my grandson was born, I’d sewn 3 dozen bags and used up all my fabric. What would I do to occupy myself the next day?

I took a ride to the local thrift store on Friday morning and bought some used curtains. By nightfall I’d sewn another 3 dozen bags.

I still have to put my labels on all of those bags. And I’ll need to develop an alternate strategy for many of them. Usually I print my logo & website on iron-on fabric. That works great on 100% cotton, but is inappropriate for manmade fibers, and many of my new bags are manmade or a blend. I’m thinking that the easiest way (which doesn’t sound like a piece of cake) is to iron my logos onto 100% cotton and then use my free-arm sewing machine to sew that on to the bags. If you have a better, quicker, easier thought, PLEASE let me know!

Before I headed up to Amanda’s, I did manage to get three of those gorgeous eggshell cotton huck lace scarves woven. They went so fast at the Roycroft show, I’m confident they’ll sell quickly at one of my upcoming shows. So now I need to weave some things with lots of color.