#53 judy bookbag

A week ago, I delivered my latest bag, #52 Judy Bookbag. This bag sold to a woman from Texas named Judy at a charity auction that was held at a friend's church. Judy was in town last weekend, so I had a deadline to finish the bag. Because I was rushing to meet this deadline, I didn't take many photos of the process. Fortunately, I took the time to have my friend, Gary Glasser, take photos of the finished product.

This bag has a braided strap that was quite a lot of work. The braid has three sections, each of which is made of two pieces of leather stitched back to back. Because of the complex shape of each of those pieces, each of them took 50 minutes to cut out. Next, 2716 holes were marked and punched out. After hand stitching the sections, they were braided together, and finally, the ends were anchored to the bag. The strap took a total of 22 hours to make. The complete bag has 7311 holes and took 51 hours to make. I'm very pleased with the result.

The strap in progress:



Finished product:





Thanks for checking in,

maureen

#52 large bookbag finished

Earlier this week, I shipped my latest creation, bag #52 Large Bookbag. I am very happy with the final product. It is by far the most beautiful bag I have made. The entire bag has 6540 holes and took 42 hours to create. The strap alone has 2172 hand punched holes and took 6 hours to stitch.

Bag in progress:



The strap itself is really very beautiful.




Finished product:



G had to try and get in on the action.



I love the softer structure of this bag. I wish it were mine to carry! I actually finished the bag in November but then proceeded to make handcrafted packaging, much of which required design work. I made a hand stitched, velvet pillow (not shown) and dustbag to stuff and store the bag, respectively. The box took approximately 6 hours to create out of mat board and construction paper. It took longer than usual because part had to be redone after a messy mishap with the "aggressively tacky" aerosol adhesive. (yikes!)



The certificate of authenticity includes the hand drawn stencil used to put the number on the nameplate, which is sewn into the lining of this bag.



I purchased very nice envelopes to put the certificate and a letter in. I put all the contents in the box to be shipped, but I just didn't feel right about having a single thing (or 2 actually) that was manufactured as part of my complete package. Those stupid envelopes had to go! So I scrapped them and made envelopes.

The combination of my loving the soft, new look and getting the design of all of the packaging fine tuned makes me really excited about this bag. I believe this bag will be the one that finally gets my work noticed. I'm hoping for great things to come. :)

Enjoy your weekend,

maureen