A set of four Formals

First off, I LOVE making custom and personal orders. I like getting to know the person and their interest of my craft. Specifically with the Formal collection, customers can provide me their own ties to make the bag more personal and special. 

A couple of months ago I was approached by a customer about making a personal order from the Formal collection. She explained to me that her father was moving into a care home and while her family was going through his belongings, she found his old ties and wanted a bag made of them.

Upon our first consultation, she explained to me that she wanted an e-reader bag for her Kindle. As we discussed and selected ties from her father's collection, it dawned on her that she wanted to make one for each of her siblings as a keepsake from their father's ties. I sent her on the task to find more ties and to pick out ones for each Kindle bag. Below are four very different Kindle bags made from one man's tie collection for his four children.

New purse added to the Handcrafted Collection

The first image is the purse I made with the flap inspired by the mosaic piece pictured below it. The purse is not an exact replica but I think it's a fair attempt at making a square mosaic piece of art into a flap for a medium sized bag.

I initially wanted to make it as a quilt but quickly learned that sewing together such small pieces was very hard to do. I fused the smaller pieces onto a larger piece of fabric and did section by section, trying my best to capture the color scheme and pattern of the original. Once that was completed I quilted over the finished piece with invisible thread to keep all the ironed-on pieces in place. The shell is made of 100% organic cotton and hemp fabric and the purse is lined with a sky blue micro suede fabric with pockets to hold a Kindle and iPhone. The purse was commissioned by a gentleman who wanted a birthday gift for his wife and she is the artist that created the beautiful mosaic piece and she is a farmer's daughter.