The Story of Jeanne's Bags Shop and Creative Process

I am a quilter by background. My extended family have all gotten a quilt from me as a gift, usually at Christmas. After a while I ran out of family to give my quilts to. What to give as a gift now? Quilted purses were really coming into their own so I decided to make a few of them as gifts. My female family, who live all over the place, were telling me how everyone would stop them and ask where they got their purse. I decided to put a toe into the "sell your craft" market and entered a large local craft fair. I tried to design my own purses and had a lot of pleasure with that.

More baby steps included selling my purses locally through consignment in a few artsy shops. I had business cards made. I realized I needed to expose myself (?) to a larger audience. I met a young woman who was just starting a computer business where she would design websites. Her background was art so she understood us non-techies very well. I was now on the internet! Still, I felt I needed to reach more people. My computer mentor told me about Etsy, which I never knew about before! Now I have also included Facebook as a marketing tool. I am in some really good shops locally and doing well at several large craft shows in the area. I am always trying to balance my time at the computer with time in my studio. I would much rather spend time in my studio! One step at a time. If you would like to opt in on my quarterly newsletter, please fill out the form on this page: http://jeannesbags.com/contact or like me on facebook.

My purse design process is simple really. I know what features I like in a purse and I try to incorporate that in most of my designs, like plenty of pockets inside and outside. I want a purse to be a work of art, yet functional. That probably comes from my background in art when I was young. So I easily fall in love with beautiful fabrics that I "must have." I study the purses that other people are wearing and say to myself that I like this feature or that feature and use these as jumping off points when designing purses. I am also cognizant that one style does not fit all, so I try to make different styles that may suit a larger population. I try to keep my prices as low as possible, without sacrificing quality in my materials. You know that saying "garbage in, garbage out" applies to purses as well. I want my purses to give lots of enjoyment for a long time for my customers.

Quilting is still a big part of my purses. Without quilting, fabric purses lose much of the appeal, at least for me. Therefore, I spend a lot of time deciding on what is the best way to quilt an individual purse. What is the best design - an all-over pattern, several different quilt patterns, following fabric motifs? This means free-motion quilting. That is where you drop the feed dogs (those "tracks") that pull the fabric through the sewing machine and put on the darning foot, which doesn't touch the fabric. Now you are in control to move the fabric wherever you want to in any direction. It does take practice to get nice even stitches. One thing that I will NEVER use is the common cross-hatching found in most every commercial quilted purse out there. There is no interest in that, no artistry. Besides, I need to keep in practice with the free-motion quilting.

Each one of my purses is unique - no two are alike. So you will not see your purse walking down the street at you. You will be the ONLY ONE who has this purse. Yes, I may use the same style, but not the same fabric. I only buy one yard of fabric and when it is gone, it is gone. I may get 2 purses, of different styles out of that one yard of fabric.

My mother is a dress maker, the best I have ever seen. If she was born in this generation, she could have gone somewhere big. Being a product of her generation, she stayed at home with us kids. My sister and I are the richer for it. She taught me to sew, even when I didn't want to learn. I know all about ripping out seams when it isn't perfect. My seam ripper is my favorite tool. Quality is hard-wired into me.

My favorite part of Jeanne's Bags is working with individual customers when designing custom purses. My client can visit me in my studio, if they live in the area, and choose their own fabric from the 1400+ yards I have in my studio. I work with clients via email and do fabric searches for them as well. My website offers over 300 fabrics to choose from. In the end, it is fulfilling to see a client's eyes light up when they see the finished product that we worked together on, come together.

To re-cap, Jeanne's Bags are an exceptional value because they are:
- unique, artsy yet functional purses
- artistic quilting
- made from quality materials
- quality construction
- priced the lowest possible
- custom work is available and encouraged

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read all about Jeanne's Bags!