Sunday, June 15, 2008

The Little Tomatoes grow on linen tote bags

Yesterday, the rain was pouring down stopping me from going to the Renegade Craft Fair, Brooklyn . I designed to stay home and worked on new bags instead. A pile of linen is sitting in the bag waiting for me to work with them.

I grabbed one of them which was a sage green, heavyweight linen. I thought that I was going to make monk bags with this linen since the dark olive green cotton which I planed to use for monk bag was already used for the eco-friendly cushions, so, I need to change the plan for monk bags.
The other choice I have is linen. I moved around the sketches for the monk bag, trying to get the perfect design and style for them, but it seemed that I couldn't get the "click" for them. I put down the pencil and got back to the fabric - touching and feeling it again and again . It's just the way that I would be able to bring out the design most of the times.



Finally, what I saw from this linen is tote - it just couldn't be monk bags with this linen. It has to be tote. I changed the way I sketch because I already saw from the fabric what I wanted, so, no need for pencil, just put them together. I grabbed a camera, did the sketches by photographing them, changed the positions to see what is good and it didn't take me long to get the "click" with the new design. I really love the feeling of linen. I wish my English would be more sophisticated and good enough to describe my feeling with linen better.

I also designed a new pattern that I'm going to use with this tote. I took the graphic that I put on The Little Tomatoes, crochet, lavender ball and painted it on linen strips. l love the result of it and I think it will look fun on other things too. I tried it on my other prototypes and I love it. It's time to harvest another group of The Little Tomatoes :)