studio guests

Today I got to have guests in the studio. My mom and niece came in for the day and helped out cutting and interfacing. Jordy was so excited to help and it’s always fun to see people learn how bags are made. They are always surprised at how time consuming the whole process is. And exhausting. I am still surprised at how exhausting it can be, and not the good exhausted where you just worked off your ice cream from the night before. More mental.

Jordyn didn’t like to cut- found it too stressful, but she was a master with the steam press and so I am going to name her “Queen Interfacer”. She and my mom cut and interfaced 5 bags and it took all day. And that wasn’t even any of the special requests that come in with the party orders. The days may be numbered for special requests. Andy came down at 8:30pm to lend a hand, started cutting the party orders and immediately started complaining. I decided it was time to turn off the studio lights.

When I was in Florida earlier this year the hotel gift shop was full of Vera Bradley bags. Never having looked at one up close I decided to take a peek and see how they were made. Mass produced. That is how they are made. Have you ever looked inside one? Each part of the bag is mass produced, and then when they put them together all the seams are showing on the inside (under a piece of bias tape to match). No wonder they can whip those things out! More power to them, seems to be working just fine for them.

So we don’t do mass production in our little studio here in the heartland. And therefore they take freakin’ forever. But they are fun and I still love doing it so we plug along. We did add another industrial sewing machine to the biz, I am hoping that it can be picked up tomorrow. Exciting stuff happening around here. Hopefully this new machine and it’s trusty operator will help with the wait time. As in make it less.

And lastly the coolest thing happened yesterday, I got a sneak peek at the new website. LOVE IT. Can’t wait for it to be up and running. Look for it soon……..