When enough people have the same piece of feedback for you, it’s pretty important to give that advice some heed.

Upon hearing for the Umpteenth Time that my bags were “Beautiful but rather big” I took it upon myself to make a few size variations, and suddenly I am now much more viable as a business.

This is only part one of a (hopefully) ongoing series, as more commissions come in and I am able to fulfill them, but unlike the previous numbered bags, I want this to be a bit more informal, because for some, the pattern is being based off of existing bags, and the idea of them sharing numbers doesn’t sit right in my spirit.

Regardless, with the repeated utterance that the bags I was making were too big (which is a fair critique, because not everyone is buying 11×17 and 12×18 prints at art conventions like I am), I wanted to make a mathematical decision that would make all of my calculations a lot easier. If the larger bags are 18×18×12, then the smaller bags would be modeled after the Primary Fa(b)rick Bag, around 12×12×6, then the medium would have to be somewhere in-between, thus I settled on 15×15×8. This, combined with the changing of the brick size to 7×3.5 made the actual creation of the bags so much easier.

From there, I have adapted the way I pitch the bags and how I offer them, because while offering an already finished product to people is good, I’ve learned that nothing beats actually having a say in the final design. So with that, I have been laying out the pattern book of the previous bags and if people are intersted, they pick the pattern, the main color, and the size they would like. The following entries are a few that have resulted from this new workflow, and I can safely say that when the vision is clear, the end result becomes remarkably graspable.

With the medium bags, outside of this one, I will be making them into messenger-type bags, with clippable straps and handles, as well as a flap to close it. This was specifically requested as a zipper-finish (which I haven’t attempted since the Sewing Machine Bag), and once I have more practice, my feelings may change, but for now, I’d like zippers to steer clear of me. Buttons All The Way.

The making of the Smaller Bags was a bit of an “Aha” Moment, because not only does the size fit most market goers better, but the added strength by the adhered paper utilized from the booklets actually substantially added to the durability and formal structure of the bag. It should also be noted that the bags themselves are slightly quicker to make, with the volumetric decrease in size.

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Fa(Brick) Bags Twenty-Three/Four/Five/Six Basket Column Variants

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Call for Requests and Customs