My new favorite book

I received my copy of The Bag Making  Bible in the mail last week and it has totally blown me away! Now I know a lot of you make bags, and some of you design your own bag patterns. So you have no fear. I want to add some cute bags using selvages into my etsy shop, but for some reason they totally intimidate me.  It's not the zippers, as I sewed my own clothing for years. Actually, it is the interfacing. Yeah, I know, some unimpressive and boring-looking but oh-so-imporant fusible interfacing has me whipped. It confuses me. Even when I worked in the local quilt shop. A customer would come in with questions about fusible interfacing and I would pawn them off on another employee.

No longer!

This impressive book by Lisa Lam  (who also has an amazing blog) has all the information you need about anything having to do with making spectacular bags. It is geared toward the beginner with lots tips, secrets, information and advice for more advanced sewists. I can't wait to get started.

Last fall I was given this skirt. I had contemplated what to do with it. Now I have a plan!

After I wash it to make the wool nice and "felty," I'm going to attempt this:

Isn't this an awesome bag? Lisa takes you step by step through all the amazing designer details. The skirt has some great orange taffeta lining and some orange leather around the waistband and I'm going to attempt to incorporate both of those somewhere into the bag.

And speaking of orange, it just makes me so happy that my Cheetos (baked, not fried--I try to be as healthy as possible with my junk food) bag has "selvage" color registration dots on the package. And you can thank Mark for pointing that out to me...