My Love Affair with Bags

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH BAGS

When did I first fall in love with bags? Sometime in the past 15 years I developed a great passion for bags mdae of fabric. We’re not talking purses, but tote bags that can be used to carry items. My first purchase was actually a woven straw bag at the Galeries Lafayettee in Paris in 1993 that I bought to use when going to the farmer’s market (shown to the left). A few years later when traveling in Asia, I bought a lovely quilted bag in Singapore in the Little India neighborhood. I had recently become a quilter and was prowling for fabrics there. One year later, on my first trip to Israel, I bought an unusual woven fabric bag in a Druse village. My collection had begun and my dilemma was how to use all these different bags and where to store them. Around this time I received my first fabric bag from my husband’s grandmother, Lena Roth Orlofsky. She was a prolific bag maker, using little fabric samples or remmants to make small bags that she often gave to other elderly people to hand from their walkers or carry on their arms. Over the next few years she gave me many of these bags as a way to raise money, but I actually gave them to my friends and to my duaghter’s friends. We all enjoyed these “grandma bags”.

I started to see beautiful quilted bags in quilt shops, and enrolled in a class at my neighborhood quilt shop, Eydies. I used bright blue and yellow French fabrics and made my first bag, which I gave to my sister Ann. After that, I was holed. I bought several more bag patterns over the years and have made quilted and cloth bags, that I have kept or given to others.
Here is one I made using small pieced batik squares . Here is one using leftover upholstery facric given to me by my friend Susan.

Over the years I have also enjoyed watching my sister and my daughter make bags of their own. Ann made this one for me:

Rebecca madethese two cute bags that I still have at home, a bright orange batik tote bag, and a messenger bag make of bright flowered oil cloth. She also made several draw string tote bags, giving them to friends and one to me (that used woven Mexican fabric).

Despite owning all of these bags, I find that I am still compelled to make more bags. When I see a new pattern at a store, or a quilted bag in a shop or on someone’s arm, I think "I could make that, or something like that.” Most recently, before a trip to Mexico, I found a tote bag pattern on the internet that was made from placemats. Inspired by this pattern, I searched for colorful woven placemats that I could buy and bring home to turn into bags.

While in Mexico, the idea for this bag of the month project emerged, and I liked it. I know that I do not need any more bags, and because I love to make bags, I will now set up a system for making them other people or fundraising groups, and give them away.

Since it is January, I need to start planning my first bag. I have decided to try to reproduce one of Grandma Lena’s little bags, just to see if I can, and to honor her memory. For the fabric, I am going to use bright purple and orange batik fabrics, which are leftover from a wedding quilt I am making for my son Harlan’s forthcoming wedding. IF the bag turns out well, we may make several more to give as gifts at the wedding.